CLEVELAND'S 

GOLDEN 

STORY 





Class __i_A3i 

CopyrightN? 

COFnUGHT DEPOSm 



CLEVELAND'S 

GOLDEN 

STORY 




THE CLEVELAND OF TODAY AND TOMORROW 

IS MADE POSSIBLE BY THE CLEVELAND 

OF YESTERDAY 



CLEVELAND'S 

GOLDEN 

STORY 



cyf Qhronicle of Hearts that Hoped, zMinds 

that Planned and Hands that 'Toiled, to 

(iMal^ a Qity " Qreat and Qlorious'' 



WRITTEN BY JAMES WALLEN 

AFTER DATA BY 

PROFESSOR WILLIAM M GREGORY 




PUBLISHED BY 

WILLIAM TAYLOR SON & CO 

TO COMMEMORATE ITS 

GOLDEN JUBILEE 

APRIL 1920 



■C L W/J 



CLEVELAND S GOLDEN STORY IS A 
CLEVELAND-MADE BOOK 

ITS TYPOGRAPHY WAS ARRANGED BY HORACE CARR 
OF CLEVELAND 

ITS PRINTING WAS EXECUTED BY 

THE LEZIUS PRINTING CO 

OF CLEVELAND 



COPYRIGHTED 192O BY 

WM TAYLOR SON & CO 

MOTION PICTURE AND ALL OTHER 

RIGHTS RESERVED 



MAY 14 !920 
©C!.A566987 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

CHAPTER I 
The Kingdom of Gold I 



CHAPTER II 
Lincoln -Hearted Men Ii 



CHAPTER III 
Taming the Wilderness . . 



CHAPTER V 

Mastery of the Inland Seas 



23 



CHAPTER IV 
Golden Eggs in Many Baskets • • • 33 



45 



CHAPTER VI 
The Lines on Ohio's Map • • • • 55 

CHAPTER VII 
Cleveland the Cradle of Invention . . ^y 

CHAPTER VIII 
Cleveland's Golden Facade .... 81 

CHAPTER IX 
For Other Books in Other Times . . 97 



CLEVELAND'S 

GOLDEN 

STORY 





CLEVELAND'S GOLDEN STORY 

CHAPTER I 
THE KINGDOM OF GOLD 

OLD is the symbol of adventure — the 
unresting urge that stirs men's souls. 
Francois de Orlenna, who crossed the 
South American continent from ocean 
to ocean in 1540, wrote: "Having eaten 
our boots and saddles, boiled with a few wild 
herbs, we set out to reach the Kingdom of 
Gold." The name Orlenna should be set down 
as a synonym for optimist. Our gratitude must 
forever enshrine heroes who ignore hardship 
and "set out to reach the Kingdom of Gold." 

In 1679, Rene Robert Cavalier Sieur de La 
Salle passed by a vast area of Great Lakes land. 
He considered it French territory. He went 
down the Mississippi, probably exploring part 
of the Ohio river on his way. 

The fertile land, afterward known as the West- 
ern Reserve, which failed to halt La Salle, 



1 CLEVELAND S GOLDEN STORY 

became the goal of others as brave but less 
erratic than the harsh French explorer, who met 
death at the hands of his own embittered fol- 
lowers. La Salle never reigned in his Golden 
Kingdom. 

The strip of land, now the site of Cleveland 
and its environs, along the shore of Lake Erie 
at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, was a 
part of the section first held by the French, who 
laid lead plates along the Ohio River to mark the 
southern limits of their claim. It was secured 
for England by British arms and diplomacy in 

1763- 

The "merry monarch," Charles II, followed 
the poHcy of granting tracts of land to companies 
for development. Thus, Connecticut colony re- 
ceived a marvellously generous grant extending 
westward to the Pacific. The royal ignorance of 
geography, being as great as the country was 
extensive, caused no end of controversy. 

The Revolutionary War, winning America for 
the colonists on the ideal of equaHty of men and 
nations, brought the grants to an issue among 
the states. Washington and Jefferson saw in 
them a peril to the new nation dedicated to 
liberty and justice. 

The claims of Connecticut were presented 
with such finesse and skill that the state obtained 
a tract of land four times the size of Rhode 
Island, consisting of three million acres. The 



THE KINGDOM OF GOLD 3 

enthusiasts were intent on forming a state and 
calling it New Connecticut. However, the name 
Western Reserve persisted. 

This territory in which Cleveland is located 
was secured by the colonial capitaHsts of the 
Connecticut Land Company for thirty cents an 
acre. The fact that when promoters surveyed 
the land they found it two hundred thousand 
acres short has a bit of poetic justice about it. 
This shortage brought the price of the land 
actually to forty cents an acre. The purchase 
price of all the Western Reserve was less than 
the cost of a single great hostelry and its loca- 
tion on Euclid Avenue today. 

The Connecticut Land Company determined, 
in accordance with its charter, to divide "the 
Promised Land" into small lots. In May, 1796, 
Moses Cleaveland, a Yale man, was selected as 
their agent and general field superintendent. 
And this appointment initiated a movement to 
the Western Reserve, which is of deep interest 
to us, intensified by the circumstance that it 
became in truth the ''land of our fathers." 

A score of years prior to the advent of Moses 
Cleaveland, one of those intrepid doers-of-good, 
a Moravian missionary, John Heckewelder, saw 
in the site of the city of Cleveland great com- 
mercial possibilities. Heckewelder, being a 
good geographer, based his conclusions on the 
happy meeting of river and lake. 



Cleveland's golden story 



Twenty years later, standing on the same 
brown earth, Moses Cleaveland visualized ex- 
actly what John Heckewelder had dreamed — 
that ships would point out of the Cuyahoga into 
Erie, as surely as the fish go up the stream in the 
glad springtime. 

Moses Cleaveland, soldier, scholar, surveyor 
and sage, left Connecticut with an entourage of 
fifty men. There were in the party civil engi- 
neers, an astronomer, a mathematician, a com- 
missary and helpers — lads with joy bubbling 
in their hearts and romance written on their 
bronzed faces. They were a land crew who 
believed in the ancient saying, "A passage peril- 
ous maketh a port pleasant." 

And they did have a perilous journey, reach- 
ing Buffalo in June, two months after Cleave- 
land's commission was given him. Here Red 
Jacket and Joseph Brant demanded that they 
halt and sit in council to consider Indian rights and 
wrongs — principally the latter. Moses Cleave- 
land satisfied the rights and mollified the wrongs 
with a gift of five hundred dollars, two beef 
cattle, and a copious supply of whiskey. Of the 
two principal parties to this transaction, one had a 
city named for him and the other a tavern — the 
Red Jacket Inn at Buffalo, long since demolished. 

The Indians agreed at the council never under 
any provocation to disturb the white settlers in 
the Western Reserve. The pipe-of-peace proved 



THE KINGDOM OF GOLD 5 

mightier than the blunderbuss, for the agree- 
ment was never violated. 

The surveying expedition celebrated Inde- 
pendence Day, July 4, 1796, at Conneaut, 
Ohio. The future state of New Connecticut was 
toasted in oratory such as was heard under 
Chaldean skies. Moses Cleaveland was gratified 
at the soldierly discipline of his boys. He held 
council with Chief Cato of the Massasauga In- 
dians and presents were exchanged. 

Sailing westward from Conneaut, Cleaveland 
touched at the mouth of a minor stream. It 
goes on forever, reminding us of the surveyor's 
disappointment, as Chagrin River. 

Anxiously skirting the shore, fresh with sum- 
mer foliage, Cleaveland watched for the mouth 
of the Cuyahoga. The boat slipped into the 
river on the morning of July 22, 1796. A 
landing was made under the east bluff of the 
river — a short distance north of the present 
Superior viaduct. 

Cleaveland, worn by travel and wearied to de- 
pression, was not certain that this would be the 
future capital site. He returned to Conneaut to 
consult the men whom he had left behind. At Con- 
neaut he sat himself before a table with a quill, 
plenty of ink and blotting sand, and unburdened 
himself to the Connecticut Land Company. He 
proclaimed the land excellent, the water clear, the 
clay banks high, the top of the land level and 



6 Cleveland's golden story 

covered with chestnut, oak, walnut, ash and 
sugar maple, and but few hemlocks. The shore 
west of the Cuyahoga, he reported to be a 
steep bank ten miles long. 

The master surveyor then expressed himself 
tersely regarding his woes. He wrote: "Those 
who are meanly envying the compensation and 
sitting at their ease, and see their prosperity 
increasing at the loss of health, ease and comfort 
of others, I wish might experience the hardships 
for one month; if not then satisfied, their grumb- 
ling would give me no pain. It is impossible to 
determine upon a place for the capital." He 
demanded more time for examination of the land 
and water-ways. He reported his men in good 
health and spirits though without "sauce or 
vegetables." 

Moses Cleaveland then went back to the 
mouth of the Cuyahoga and re-considered his 
judgment. He determined that, after all, he knew 
no better site for the capital of the new state. 

He made a town plan, a central square from 
which streets extended. He put his official O. K. 
on the map and the town was called Cleaveland. 
Years later, a news-writer left out the "a" and 
the revised spelling was accepted. 

Moses Cleaveland was just three months on 
the Western Reserve. He left under a fire of 
criticism for expending fourteen thousand dol- 
lars without completing the work. The 



THE KINGDOM OF GOLD 7 

Company sent a preacher. Reverend Seth Hart, 
to finish the survey. It is said that the dominie 
buried a man and married a couple, but made 
no changes in the plans of the founder of the 
city of Cleveland. 

Moses Cleaveland did not re-visit the city of 
his founding. He made for it a very modest pre- 
diction when he said, "The child is now born 
that may live to see the place as large as Old 
Windham.'' Old Windham, Connecticut, now 
has a citizenry of fifteen thousand people. New 
England breezes blow about the granite monu- 
ment reverently erected over Cleaveland's grave 
in Canterbury, Connecticut, in 1906, one hun- 
dred years after his death, by the people of 
Cleveland. 

Cleveland was deliberately planned and built. 
It was not the growth of a chance acorn — the 
miscellaneous collection of huts about a fort or 
trading post, where settlers tarried, lacking the 
courage to go on. 

No other city in the New World stands as 
laid out by its founder and bearing his name. 

From this point, Cleveland's golden story is 
a chronicle of hearts that hoped, minds that 
planned and hands that toiled to make the city 
of Moses Cleaveland's founding "great and 
glorious." 



CHAPTER 11 
LINCOLN-HEARTED MEN 




CLEVELAND'S GOLDEN STORY 



CHAPTER II 



LINCOLN-HEARTED MEN 




HEY came years before Lincoln. Meas- 
ured in terms of turmoil and suffering, 
they preceded the Emancipator by 
ages. And yet they were the type of 
men and women of whom the minstrel 
of democracy, Vachel Lindsay, sings: 

"We must have many Lincoln-hearted men. 
A city is not built in a day. 
And they must do their work and come and 

go 
While countless generations pass away." 
Lorenzo Carter, James Kingsbury, Nathaniel 
Doan and Abram Hickox kept at bay the wilder- 
ness attempting to re-invade the city projected 
by Moses Cleaveland. In recording their coura- 
geous frontier struggles, let us not forget the 
women who contributed to "the winning of the 
West." A New England woman once wrote 



12 CLEVELAND S GOLDEN STORY 

in a letter to a friend, ''We speak of the hard- 
ships of the Puritan fathers. But, mark you, the 
Puritan mothers had to endure the Puritan 
fathers." Aside from such domestic problems, 
the women of the Western Reserve met genuine 
affliction with a smiling bravery. 

The good wife of Lorenzo Carter started west- 
ward with her stalwart husband from Vermont. 
Reaching Buffalo in the late fall, they decided 
to spend the winter months in a more advanced 
settlement on the Canadian side. But before 
they crossed the rushing Niagara, Mrs. Carter 
gave birth to a child. Her baby's attendant was 
Chloe Inches, a young Canadian girl. Here was 
this untaught maid in Kipling's lines: 

"Who stands beside the Gates of Birth, 
Herself a child — a child unborn." 

Whether it be her name or the circumstance, 
something makes Chloe a fascinating figure in 
this story. Her name signifies in the Greek, 
"verdant or blooming." Chloe, named for a 
heroine of Greek romance, a shepherdess in 
Sidney's "Arcadia/' the wife in a homely Ben 
Jonson comedy, the wanton shepherdess in 
Fletcher's allegory; this girl coming of parents 
who had a touch of Old World culture, witnessed 
IKc in one of its most uncompromising aspects, 
as did all of the frontier women. 

The Carters went on to Cleveland in the 
spring. A spot on West Second Street was the 



LINCOLN-HEARTED MEN I3 

location of their first Cleveland home. There was 
no going to market for provisions in those days — 
not even a ''cash and carry" system obtained. 
Carter and his faithful dog made for the woods 
and returned with venison and other game. 
They came back with provender in plenty be- 
cause the mighty man had tiny and precious 
mouths to fill. The meats were roasted on a spit 
before an open fire. The way of living was ele- 
mental and Carter's children sorely missed the 
Uttle refinements of the home back east. 

Misfortunes visited the family often and 
severely. The children set fire to the new house. 
Carter stoically set out to hew logs for a new and 
larger one, which he made into a tavern to 
entertain infrequent strangers and to form a 
social centre for the village. Much to Mrs. 
Carter's dismay, the Indians would come into 
the tavern, group themselves about the fire and 
sleep through the day, indifferent to household 
routine. 

During all this period, Lorenzo Carter was 
growing in strength and wisdom. He became, 
by common consent, the administrator of the 
unwritten law of the new country. It is recorded 
that the first settlers of Cleveland were never 
seriously discommoded by the Indians. There 
were no massacres and no ambush warfare. The 
Indians fought among themselves and called in 
Lorenzo Carter as a mediator. 



14 CLEVELAND S GOLDEN STORY 

Carter learned the Indian dialects and the 
ways of the council-fire. In an historic personal 
battle, Big Sun and Menompsy, a medicine man, 
had carved each other with knives. Lorenzo 
Carter was able to avert war between the Chip- 
pewas and the Senecas over this incident. The 
medicine man had attended the wife of Big Sun. 
The claim was made that his medicine had 
killed her. Carter held that the medicine man 
acted in good faith and the Indians accepted his 
judgment. 

Carter knew little law but based his decisions 
on humanity and common sense. He realized 
the value of sociability as a community lubri- 
cant. He considered baked pork and beans, 
plum cake and doughnuts, as potent pacifiers 
and means of inducing fellowship. The banquet 
board then, no less than now, was the peace 
table. 

Oilman Bryant charmingly described a social 
affair at Carter's tavern. He tells of his own 
fastidious preparation for the event; how he 
dressed his hair with candle-grease and a coat 
of flour in lieu of an aristocratic wig. In addition 
to this, he employed a yard and a half of black 
ribbon to tie the queue. Attired in a gingham 
suit, a wool hat and heavy shoes, Bryant gal- 
lantly took to the ball Miss Nancy Doan, who 
lived four miles east of town. There was the 
lavender of romance about going to an old-time 



LINCOLN-HEARTED MEN I5 

party, which eludes the more elaborate social 
functions of today. 

Oilman Bryant wrote: "I took' the old horse 
*Tib* for Miss Doan who mounted behind me 
from a stump in front of the Doan cabin. She 
spread her underpetticoat over the horse's back, 
and held up her calico dress to keep it clean. It 
was a long four-mile ride through the woods to 
the Carter tavern, but the thought of Major 
Jones fiddling *Hie Betty Martin' and the 
^Sailor's Hornpipe' kept us in good spirits." 

This winsome girl will serve to introduce her 
illustrious father, Nathaniel Doan, the first 
blacksmith of the Western Reserve. The Con- 
necticut Land Company had decided that the 
settlers might do their settling without the 
services of a lawyer, be born and die without 
succor from a doctor and without consolation 
from a preacher, but a blacksmith was indis- 
pensable. So they sent Nathaniel Doan as the 
official smith, presenting him with a city lot. 

Doan had served with the surveying com- 
panies. His family joined him from Haddam, 
traveling almost entirely by water via the Con- 
necticut River, Long Island Sound, the Hudson, 
the Mohawk and its branches, completing the 
journey along the shores of the Lakes Ontario 
and Erie. 

Doan, too, became a tavern keeper, establish- 
ing a noted place, "Doan's Tavern on the Euclid 



1 6 Cleveland's golden story 

Road/' Doan seems to have possessed much of 
the expansive commercial ability of the present- 
day packer. He operated a saleratus or baking 
soda factory to supply a substitute for the lye 
then used in cooking. He operated a shop, 
tavern, factory, a general store, and became a 
road builder, the postmaster, justice of the peace 
and religious mentor, conducting services in his 
own home. 

When Doan retired from blacksmithing, he 
was succeeded by Abram Hickox who arrived in 
1808, walking all the way to Cleveland from 
Connecticut. His wife and five children rode in 
a wagon drawn by oxen. Father Abram keeping 
abreast the team. Hickox operated a shop near 
the present site of the Rockefeller building. He 
was a philosopher of the Eben Holden type, and 
there is recorded a gracious picture of the fine 
old "uncle to all the children" decorating the 
village schoolhouse with evergreens and candles 
in preparation of the Yuletide festivities. 

The fourth of the quartette of Lincoln-hearted 
men was James Kingsbury who founded New- 
burg. Kingsbury and his three children came 
from New Hampshire. Pathos played its fateful 
part in their lives. Mr. Kingsbury found it 
necessary to return to New Hampshire, leaving 
his family on the frontier. On reaching his old 
home in the east, he was taken ill. The family, 
then at Conneaut, was in peril. Their cabin was 



LINCOLN-HEARTED MEN I7 

about buried beneath the snow and the wolf 
came sniffing at their door. The scant food 
supply was daily diminishing. Kindly Indians 
replenished the larder. But the storms became 
too severe for even the Redskins. 

The children cried from the cold. Another 
baby came. Kingsbury, with the aid of a faithful 
Indian guide, arrived home on Christmas day. 
The tiny life of the new baby hovered a day or 
so, as if awaiting the father, and was gone. Mrs. 
Kingsbury became distressingly ill. The family 
cow, which supplied the beneficent nourishment 
of the children, was poisoned by eating oak 
leaves and died. Finally Kingsbury was able to 
make a trip to Erie and to return with food. 
Sustenance gave a renewed bouyancy of spirits, 
and the Kingsburys were victors in the battle 
with the wilderness. 

These pioneer men and women did what they 
found necessary to do and without complaint. 
Lorenzo Carter, for instance, though sorely tried 
by the experience, conducted an execution with- 
out flinching from the ordeal. An Indian by 
the comic opera name of O'Mic was found 
guilty of murdering two trappers near Sandusky. 
The Indians assenting, he paid the penalty ac- 
cording to the law of the white man. 

A small group of men armed with flint-lock 
guns formed a guard about O'Mic. He was 
drawn to the place of execution seated on his 



1 8 Cleveland's golden story 

coffin, in a wagon which had been freshly painted 
for the occasion. The gallows were erected on 
the Public Square. O'Mic approached the gal- 
lows with great anxiety, affirming that he would 
show white men how a brave Indian could die. 
When the party reached the gallows. Major Carter 
and the sheriff adjusted the rope about O'Mic's 
neck. A black cap was drawn over his head. The 
Indian lost his bravado and struggled to escape. 

The Indians, congregated, showed signs of 
emotion. Carter addressed O'Mic in the native 
tongue. He appealed to him to display his Indian 
courage. O'Mic agreed to die bravely if he were 
given a pint of whiskey. Major Carter con- 
sidered this fair and right and, in the name of the 
law, quickly procured a pint of the courage- 
inducing liquid. O'Mic was satisfied. The rope 
was again adjusted and the cap lowered. 

This time O'Mic was more terrified than be- 
fore and pleaded for more whiskey. After another 
parley in the dialect. Carter acquiesced. And 
while the Indian was consuming this second 
draft, the wagon was driven out from under him. 
And the law had followed its course. 

The attending Indians were well imbued with 
a deep respect for the white man's law. An 
eyewitness of this execution tells us that the 
flint-lock guns in the hands of the guards were so 
damp that the Indians might easily have res- 
cued O'Mic. 



LINCOLN-HEARTED MEN I9 

Dr. Long, Cleveland's first physician, utilized 
the skeleton of O'Mic for clinical purposes. And 
gossip affirmed that Captain Sholes, a patient 
of Dr. Long's, became panic stricken at the 
sight of O'Mic's frame in the doctor's pioneer 
hospital. The fright of the captain was set 
down by a wit as the last public appearance of 
the terrible O'Mic. 

And the bizarre tale of O'Mic is here set forth 
not because of any distinction on his part but 
because he represented but one of the factors 
with which Lincoln-hearted men of the Western 
Reserve contended, without compromise or 
favor. 



CHAPTER III 
TAMING THE WILDERNESS 




CLEVELAND'S GOLDEN STORY 



CHAPTER III 



TAMING THE WILDERNESS 




NE memorable evening before the close 
of the year 1813, the Paul Revere silver, 
the Sheffield plate and the Irish napery 
were brought out of the hampers and 
^ linen chests and set glistening and white 
under the soft light of the candelabra. For the 
citizens of Cleveland were banqueting Commo- 
dore Oliver Hazard Perry and General William 
Henry Harrison. 

On September lo, 1813, Cleveland folk had 
heard the cannonading in the battle of Lake 
Erie. And soon after came Perry's report, the 
mere repetition of which thrills Americans to- 
day: "We have met the enemy and they are 
ours." 

The village of Cleveland was an active partici- 
pant in the War of 1812. The American forces 
were compelled to surrender to the British at 



24 CLEVELAND S GOLDEN STORY 

Detroit. Captain Stanton Sholes, who was sent 
to Cleveland, built of chestnut logs a star- 
shaped stockade with a capacity of two hundred 
armed men. This stockade, Fort Huntington, 
was Cleveland's sole defense against the enemy. 
Strategically located in a dense wood west of 
Third Street and north of Lakeside Avenue, on a 
bluff overlooking the lake, it was to be the 
refuge and possibly the last stand of the patriots 
of Cleveland, should the British make a formid- 
able attack. Its armament consisted of but one 
small cannon mounted on a pair of wagon 
wheels. Lorenzo Carter and James Kingsbury 
helped to erect this fort. 

The women and children of Cleveland tasted 
of terror when they were hastily removed to 
Doan's Corners one August day in 1812 because 
of the reported movement of the British and 
Indians near Lake Huron in preparation for an 
attack on Cleveland by boat. It was afterward 
discovered that the group observed by the scout 
was a company of sadly wounded American 
men paroled from Detroit. 

The commanders of the British fleet on Erie 
kept a wary eye on Cleveland, believing it to be 
a source of American suppHes. In June of 1B13, 
the British "fleet" — the good ship "Queen Char- 
lotte" — appeared before Cleveland. A sudden 
and terrific thunder-storm, coming as if directed 
by Providence to save the ill-protected village, 
drove the ship from the Cleveland shores. 



TAMING THE WILDERNESS 2^ 

The shipwrights of Cleveland had the honor 
of constructing two noble ships of Perry's fleet. 
The ''Porcupine" and the "Portage" were built 
on the Cuyahoga River and provisioned and 
equipped with sails at Cleveland. Before Perry 
advanced into Put-in-bay, his fleet presented a 
never-to-be-forgotten spectacle, for a few hours, 
off the Cuyahoga. 

Well might the villagers toast Commodore 
Oliver Hazard Perry, who gave American fight- 
ing men an immortal slogan — whose name is 
to the youth of America all that Nelson signifies 
to the boys of Britannia. 

The war over, the Cleveland citizens turned 
toward better organization. The Kelleys have 
always had a leaning toward the law and politi- 
cal leadership. And a lad by the name of Kelley 
was in the vanguard of the new movement. 
Alfred Kelley made the first census of Cleveland, 
counting one hundred and fifty-two heads. On 
a map of the town, he indicated the locations of 
all of the houses, numbering thirty-four. The 
town limits then embraced a square west of old 
Erie Street, now East Ninth Street, and north 
of Huron Road. 

Kelley wrested the village charter from the 
state legislature in December of 1814, just 
eleven years after Ohio was admitted to the 
Union. No election in Cleveland has ever been 
attended with less friction than the first, which 



2$ Cleveland's golden story 

was held in June, 1815. Out of the twelve voters 
registering, nine were elected to office and of 
course Kelley became president. Lorenzo Carter 
was chosen treasurer. 

In order to maintain his position properly, 
Alfred Kelley brought a bride from New York to 
be first lady of the village. He also purchased a 
horse and carriage with which to convey his 
consort to Cleveland. But later the Kelley crest 
might have suffered humiliation when another 
citizen bought a Victoria and a span of fine mules 
to be driven by a colored man in livery. 

The first village council consisted of mer- 
chants, a tanner and a physician, who made 
regulations controlling the too promiscuous use 
of fire-arms, fast driving in the village, and the 
distribution of merchandise. An election was 
equivalent to a draft, for failure to hold office 
was punished by fine. 

The fact that two men with Cleveland as their 
destination passed through the town without 
recognizing it, may be charged to frequent stops 
at taverns along the lane, rather than to the 
lackof acity plan. Had the unobserving stran- 
gers journeyed hither in 1813, they surely would 
have been made aware of their arrival by the 
imposing courthouse, erected by Levi Johnson 
on the Public Square at the cost of J500. 

The first village postmaster was Elisha Norton, 
who received mail fortnightly from Warren. His 



TAMING THE WILDERNESS T] 

successor, John Walworth, held six offices. But 
this is not to be counted against him. One year, 
he received seventy-one cents and the privilege 
of mailing his letters free as compensation for 
three months' service as postmaster. 

Walworth carried the mail in his pocket and 
delivered it C. O. D. at his convenience. There 
was a mail route between Cleveland and Pitts- 
burgh, four days being required for the trip. 
The mail was so light that it could be buttoned 
under the carrier's waistcoat, and so saddle 
bags were not always needed. 

Letters were mailed and paid for on a mileage 
basis. A single sheet cost six and one-fourth 
cents for any distance under thirty miles. Maga- 
zines were mailable at one cent a page. It took 
several weeks to get news from New York to 
Cleveland. As an emergency measure, a fast 
post was established during the War of 1812 
from Washington to Cleveland. Important dis- 
patches were carried in one week. 

In the conduct of educational affairs, the 
villagers exercised a rare wisdom. They believed 
in a scientific distribution of burdens. They 
compelled the unmarried men of the village to 
pay the tuition of the poor children. 

The first school was established in the front 
room of Major Carter's cabin. At a later time 
the post-rider, Ashael Adams, held school in a 
small cabin on St. Clair street. He received ten 



28 Cleveland's golden story 

dollars a month in money and wheat. The first 
school of major importance in Ohio was estab- 
lished in an old academy by Harvey Rice in 
1 822. This famous educator laid down principles 
which are today recognized as sound. 

Those who complain about the accommoda- 
tion trains for Painesville as being few, far 
between and sometimes late, should read the 
Painesville stage announcement which appeared 
in the "Cleveland Gazette" in 18 18. The stage 
left Painesville every Thursday at four o'clock 
in the afternoon and arrived in Cleveland at 
ten o'clock the next morning. 

Fare on some of the stage lines out of Cleve- 
land was collected according to the weight and 
size of the passenger, which, considering the size 
of the coaches and the condition of the roads, 
was an equitable system. Anyway, why should 
the slim debutante be compelled to pay as much 
fare as a man of Johnsonian proportions? Springs 
had not been invented. Leather straps supported 
the swaying body of the stage-coach. You trav- 
elled in rainy weather or sunny, according to 
your preference for dust or mud. 

The stages left daily in every direction from 
the old Franklin house, which was near the 
present Rockefeller building on West Superior. 

Spangler's Tavern, west of the Square, was 
the headquarters of the celebrated Conestoga 
freight wagons, which for decades were the only 



TAMING THE WILDERNESS 1g 

means of securing merchandise from Cincinnati 
and Pittsburgh. These wagons deserve a chapter 
in the history of transportation. They were the 
forerunners of the modern motor trucks. They 
carried from five to eight tons of goods. 

The Conestoga freight wagons were drawn by 
six or eight draft horses, with bear-skin covered 
collars. The saddles were embellished with bells. 
The horses were guided by a single rein from the 
leader to the teamster, who was seated on the 
last wheel horse. The great wagons negotiated 
roads which today would be considered impass- 
able. When night found them out on the 
prairies, the freight drivers camped till sunrise. 

Produce dealers of the time opposed the 
building of canals, so efficient in their estimation 
was the freight wagon system. Let us not be too 
scornful of their judgment, for did not Horace 
Greeley, the famous editor of the New York 
Tribune, write a wrathy editorial opposing the 
use of illuminating gas on the theory that it 
would burn up New York? 

The early fathers of the industrial kingdom 
of northern Ohio were men of initiative and 
vision. Cleveland's Golden Story is a saga of the 
fruits of their labors. 



CHAPTER IV 
GOLDEN EGGS IN MANY BASKETS 







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CLEVELAND'S GOLDEN STORY 

CHAPTER IV 
GOLDEN EGGS IN MANY BASKETS 




HE fathers of Cleveland's arts, crafts and 
trades, whether by design or chance, fol- 
lowed the philosophy of "Don Quixote" 
in establishing the city's industries. 
Cervantes wrote: "It is the part of a 
wise man to keep himself today for tomorrow 
and not to venture all his eggs in one basket." 
The early industries were as varied in char- 
acter as they were numerous. And this condition 
prevails today, to the marked benefit of Cleve- 
land. It will prove even more vital to the city's 
welfare in the future, as the rivalry for place 
and power between metropolitan centres be- 
comes more intense. Cleveland's eggs are 
decidedly not all in one basket. They were not 
laid that way in the beginning. 

One of the most interesting of the kinder- 
garten industries was that of the water carrier. 



34 



CLEVELAND S GOLDEN STORY 



Benhu Johnson, an ex-soldier with a wooden leg, 
was town water purveyor. He pre-dated all 
other private and municipal water plants. 
Johnson sold water for laundry purposes ex- 
clusively — two barrels for twenty-five cents. 

To complement Johnson *s water wagon, the 
first in Cleveland, Jabez Kelley supplied soft 
soap at a shilling a gallon. The soap was a by- 
product of Kelley's candle factory at the end of 
Superior Lane. 

The first tanner in Cleveland, whose name, 
records reveal, was Williamson, did a thriving 
business for those days with the trappers. He 
cured the raw furs of foxes, wolves, bears and 
squirrels. He oak-tanned leather and dressed it 
for the local boot and shoe makers. 

Much of this leather was heavy, but many a 
Cleveland Cinderella^s boots were Williamson- 
tanned. The family home was east of the Square, 
which later became the site of the Williamson 
building. 

There were weeks on the Western Reserve 
when the residents went without bread for lack 
of flour due from the East. The Connecticut 
Land Company believed firmly in the truth of 
the saying of English Matthew Henry, "Here 
is bread which strengthens man's heart and is 
therefore the staff of life." 

Accordingly, in 1799, they equipped a mill at 
Newburg Falls, now Broadway and Warner 



GOLDEN EGGS IN MANY BASKETS 35 

Road, under the direction of Wheeler Williams, 
whom they endowed with one hundred acres of 
land. To the mill at Newburg Falls the settlers 
brought their grain for grinding and their 
cunning for dealing. 

There was in Cleveland, in the formative days, 
a hatter named Walworth, who made the broad 
pioneer hat, the predecessor of the world-famed 
Stetson. On occasion, Walworth indulged in 
fancy and made tall felt hats for aspiring states- 
men. Doubtless some of his creations renewed 
and gave pungency to Lewis Carroll's phrase, 
"As mad as a hatter." 

Among the ventures of 1801 was a still on the 
river's edge. The spring water which bubbled 
on the premises and the grain brought by the 
farmers were utilized to produce the insignifi- 
cant volume of two quarts of liquor a day. At 
this rate, we must give the settlers all advantage 
of doubt and say that the beverage was made 
for medicinal purposes. 

Along in 1829 came one of the most fantastic 
phases of American arts and crafts. The people 
of Cleveland developed a collective mania which 
expressed itself in a fad for the production of 
silk and silk products. The women of Cleveland 
exhibited at the County Fair, in old Glenville 
near 105th Street, articles in which they featured 
silk yarn made in the home and spun from silk 
cocoons grown in Cleveland and vicinity. 



^6 Cleveland's golden story 

At this exhibit, James Houghton received 
special recognition for the most lucrative half- 
acre of mulberry trees. Mary Severance was 
rewarded with a premium for specimens of 
silk twist. Mrs. Brainard of Brooklyn deserved 
special recognition for exhibiting silk in eight 
tints, colored with domestic vegetable dye. 
There were doubtless enthusiasts who be- 
lieved that in the valley of the Cuyahoga, 
old China and its famed silk worms would find a 
serious rival. 

But Ohioans found that the silk worm is not 
industrious in so rigorous a clime. The deserv- 
edly famous Ohio honey-bee proved a lucrative 
successor to the silk worm. 

A more sensible development was the four 
woolen mills which employed eighteen men, and 
were exceedingly busy in the '40s. There was a 
Bohemian settlement on the West Side that 
formed the nucleus of an extensive blanket 
industry. 

It was in this period that the carding of wool, 
the weaving of cloth, and the making of gar- 
ments shifted from the back parlor of the home 
to the shop. The ancient relationship of women 
and textiles was changing. 

In 1845, Kaufman Koch started a Cleveland 
tailoring establishment which, by a long line 
of succession — three-quarters of a century 
later — became the great establishment for the 



\ 



GOLDEN EGGS IN MANY BASKETS 37 

making of men's clothing — known as The Joseph 
and Feiss Company. 

In 1854, David Black came to Cleveland. He 
had a farm at the corner of St. Clair and Perry- 
Street, now East 22nd Street. He left farming 
to establish a notion store and in 1876 founded 
the Black and Hoffman organization for the 
making of women's clothing. He was succeeded 
by Herman Black, who introduced the radical 
idea of producing garments before they were 
ordered, which had always seemed to the 
old tailors a daring gamble. 

The standardization of sizes on the basic 
theory that nature is a sculptor with but few 
models, molding just so many people according 
to each type and pattern, was the thought 
behind Mr. Black's plans. It had not occurred 
to the makers of homespuns that production in 
quantity was possible and that people could be 
made to favor a limited number of styles. 

Morris Black, one of Cleveland's leading citi- 
zens is now head of this organization, still known 
as the H. Black Company. 

The Printz-Biederman Company of Cleveland 
— makers of the "Printzess" garments for 
women — have done much to give ready-to-wear 
garments the status once held exclusively by the 
creations of the modiste. This house was founded 
in 1893 by Moritz Printz and Joseph Biederman. 

In 1903, this company was incorporated under 
its present name. Originally they made only 



38 Cleveland's golden story 

coats and suits; in later years they produced 
garments for misses and children. The Printz- 
Biederman Company is widely known for its 
method of dealing with employees, now number- 
ing about 1300. The workers have a direct voting 
voice in all matters which affect their welfare. 

In the youth of the Republic, men and women 
were much more individual in dress than even 
today. Benjamin Franklin, all of his life, kept 
to one style of suit, which was made by his good 
wife. He was received at Versailles and at the 
Court of St. James in a suit tailored by the 
loving fingers of his spouse. 

Cleveland is the second city in volume of sales 
in the women's wear trade today. It is the 
capital of the fine ready-to-wear world. Cleve- 
land is a "selling market." It sends its salesmen 
into most every city and village for orders. New 
York is a ^'buying market" where merchants 
go to select goods. Much of the cloth to make 
this clothing is woven in the city. 

Cleveland, leader among cities for diversified 
industries, does not neglect the problem of related 
trades. The great worsted mills began operation 
in Cleveland in 1888. In 1920, three carloads 
of wool shearings are transformed daily into 
enough clothing to make ten thousand men's 
suits. 

The tracing wheel and scissors have been 
replaced by the electric knife which cuts two 



GOLDEN EGGS IN MANY BASKETS 39 

hundred garments in one swift operation. Sixty 
buttons are automatically attached in a minute. 
Ten thousand complete and modish garments 
are finished every day. Eight to ten carloads of 
women's coats and suits are daily expressed from 
Cleveland to a thousand points on the continent. 

More people are required to fashion clothing 
in Cleveland than are needed in any other 
industry except iron and steel. The census of 
1 910 disclosed the fact that one girl in every five 
or six Cleveland lassies enters the sewing trades. 

The clothing industry, which gained its first 
vital momentum in the years beginning 1880, 
is here used to illustrate the magic swiftness of 
Cleveland's commercial expansion, because it 
is the one industry which grew out of the home. 
Perhaps with a sigh of relief from its mistress, 
it slipped through the fingers of the housewife. 
The other industries had their beginning in the 
blacksmith's forge, the lumber camp, the saw- 
mill and the open hearth. The most intensely 
domestic of manufacturing now stands among 
the most scientific. 

Even the feminine fervor for silk-growing and 
spinning has its present-day reminder in houses 
which create out of blocks of spruce, synthetic 
silk as lustrous and appealing as the silk in a 
mandarin's coat. 

But garment-making, being the mother in- 
dustry, the most feminine of all occupations, can 



40 CLEVELAND S GOLDEN STORY 

never entirely desert the fireside. Women are 
not content to fold their hands while they may 
exercise skill in fashioning clothes for wee ones. 

Cleveland's contributions to the sewing 
machine industry are of pertinent interest. In 
187O5 Thomas White and his sons were experi- 
menting in a small machine shop on Canal 
Street. 

About this period, Susan B. Anthony and 
Elizabeth Cady Stanton made a railroad journey 
through Ohio on their way to Illinois. There 
being no sleeping accommodations on their 
particular train, the two pioneer suffragists sat 
through the night gazing into the darkness. 
Mrs. Stanton had noted the number of homes in 
which lights were shining. "Can it be/* said she 
to Miss Anthony, "that there is sickness in all 
of those isolated homes?" 

Miss Anthony determined to know the reason 
for the burning of the midnight oil. The con- 
ductor on the train was well acquainted with 
the folk along the line of his route. He said, 
"It is the early fall and the women are preparing 
for winter. They have no leisure nor oppor- 
tunity to sew in the daytime. After the babies 
are tucked in bed, they start to work — patiently 
stitching every garment by hand." 

Miss Anthony resolved that information 
about sewing machines was just as valuable as 
suffragist propaganda, so she induced manu- 



GOLDEN EGGS IN MANY BASKETS 4I 

facturers to print hand-bills with suffrage pub- 
Hcity on one side and sewing machine advertise- 
ments on the other. With Mrs. Stanton, Miss 
Anthony induced the fathers of the Western 
Reserve to part with some of their cash to 
lessen woman's burden. 

Thomas White, of Cleveland, was one of the 
sewing machine makers who heartily approved 
of the missionary work of Miss Anthony and 
Mrs. Stanton. The other sewing machine in- 
ventors and manufacturers were in the East. 
White perfected his machine and produced and 
sold it in the territory which needed it the most. 
Over eight million White sewing machines have 
helped to bring more leisure to women. 

And out of the sewing machine business came 
other industries. The Whites were so successful 
with the domestic machine that they began 
building bicycles. Bicycles were the forerunner 
of the automobile. 

The White Company evolved first the steam 
machine, then a gasoline car, and is now world- 
famed for motor trucks. 

So you see that the hearth-side crafts of the 
Western Reserve trace a continuous relationship 
to the refinements of today — from linsey wool- 
sey jackets to limousine motor coats. 



CHAPTER V 
MASTERY OF THE INLAND SEAS 



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CLEVELAND'S GOLDEN STORY 




CHAPTER V 
MASTERY OF THE INLAND SEAS 

NDUSTRY without transportation is 
simply routine by which day-by-day 
needs are supplied. Then come a few 
decorative objects to satisfy the urge for 
self-expression in art, which is the soul of 
the people. The Navajo Indians made their 
blankets and pottery for their own pleasure 
rather than for trade. But white men have 
always been rovers. The early settlers of the 
Western Reserve had more than domestic 
ambitions. The inheritance of the English 
and French traditions of commercial adventure 
moved them to a conquest of the Great Lakes. 
The first sail-boat to part the waters of Lake 
Erie was the "Griffin," built near Buffalo by 
La Salle. The voyager of Rouen directed the 
practical construction of the "Griffin." Father 
Louis Hennepin kept alive the faith and enthu- 



46 Cleveland's golden story 

siasm of their fellow explorers and the Indian 
helpers. The "Griffin" was launched in the 
Spring of 1679. ^^ was of forty-five ton bur- 
den and armed with five cannon. 

The "Griffin'* touched at Detroit, Mackinac 
and at Green Bay, and loaded with a rich cargo 
of furs, started on its return trip. La Salle and 
his leaders had left the boat, continuing their 
explorations. The famous "Griffin" and its rich 
cargo never reached its haven. 

For centuries, the Indians in their canoes had 
carried on primitive barter along the edges of 
the lakes. But no Indian had ever summoned 
courage to go straight across. To the awe of the 
Redskins, the white navigators in their sturdy 
French bateaux propelled by a crew of paddlers, 
went directly across the lakes. 

In 1808, Major Carter launched a schooner 
lightly dubbed the ''Zephyr," which she cer- 
tainly was not. The ''Zephyr" carried thirty 
tons and made regular trips with furs, grind- 
stones, salt, merchandise and iron between Buf- 
falo, Cleveland and Detroit — the present route 
of the floating hostelries of the Cleveland and 
Buffalo and the Detroit and Cleveland lines. 

i.evi Johnson, the Sir Christopher Wren of 
Ccveland's architects and builders, who con- 
structed the first courthouse, the first frame 
house in the city and many of the early office 
structures, built the "Pilot" in a yard at the 



MASTERY OF THE INLAND SEAS 47 

site of the present Opera House. Johnson^s 
craft was hauled to the river with much urging 
and straining by twenty-eight oxen. 

In the libraries of men who have a passion for 
the sea and a fervent love for the shapely ships 
that won victories over great waters, there are 
models of the clippers developed after the War 
of 1 8 12. These three-masted boats were trim 
and speedy, with well-turned bows and broad 
sterns. Some of the most famous carried five 
masts and were of two thousand five hundred 
tons. These glorious swift sailers were of white 
oak, the deck-house and spars being of pine. 
Michigan's straightest timber went into their 
masts. And it is a token of the affection of their 
masters for these sailing boats that many of 
them were christened with feminine names. 
Thomas Quayle was the most eminent boat 
designer of the time. 

With the depletion of the forests and the 
introduction of steam, the romantic full-rigged 
craft were banished from our water-ways. They 
live in the memories of the old marine men and 
in the admiration of youthful readers of adven- 
ture tales. The first steam-boat to put in at the 
Cleveland harbor was the famous '* Walk-in- the- 
Water," named for a friendly Indian who was 
an adviser of the pioneers of Buffalo. 

On the first day of September, 1818, the 
people of Cleveland gathered on the bluff over- 



48 CLEVELAND'S GOLDEN STORY 

looking the lake to watch this curious craft 
approach the town. The "Walk-in-the-Water" 
made eight to ten miles an hour. Cord-wood, 
piled high on the deck, supplied its fuel. Inspired 
by this steam-propelled boat, Johnson con- 
structed the "Enterprise** in 1824. The "Enter- 
prise" was luxuriously fitted, so the Western 
Reservists thought, with cabins for passengers. 

By 1830 there were five passenger boats plying 
between Buffalo, Cleveland and Detroit. Aside 
from the fact that the side-wheelers had a fire 
or an explosion occasionally, they were fairly 
safe and moderately comfortable. Some folk 
preferred to ride horse-back from Buffalo to 
Cleveland rather than risk the trip on this 
"deviUsh contraption." The fear was expressed 
that a side-wheeler might lose one of its wheels 
and the boat turn on its side. 

The first boat bearing the proud name "City 
of Cleveland" was built in 1837. The "City of 
Cleveland" had a steam whistle and was 
superior to the other craft on the lake in that 
she could vent her emotions. The lordly "Em- 
pire" was another side- wheeler of great fame. 
The cabins were furnished in the gaudy Ameri- 
can Empire style of decoration. The "Empire" 
advertised a cuisine under the direction of a 
chef, and also bands and entertainment. And 
we call the cabaret a novelty! The "Empire" 
destroys our illusions. 



MASTERY OF THE INLAND SEAS 49 

We who live among the softer indulgences of 
life are stirred by tales of hardship and endur- 
ance. We are thrilled by the stories of the early 
side-wheelers whose decks and cabins were 
battered by the cord wood, which shifted in the 
relentless storms. The graceful side-wheels gave 
way to hidden propellers. Many of the old boats 
were newly equipped. 

Then railroads came, and the passenger traffic 
by boat lost favor. Iron, coal, copper and grain 
became the chief cargoes of the lake boats. 
From the '70s on, the commerce of the "land- 
locked seas" grew in volume, until it can now be 
said that Liverpool receives less tonnage in a 
year than Cleveland. 

The mighty achievement of the lake freighter 
can best be pictured in contrasts. The brig 
"Columbia" brought one hundred and thirty 
tons of ore from Marquette in 1855. Today 
"Le Land De Graff" brings fourteen thousand 
tons of ore and returns to Superior with two 
hundred cars of coal. This tremendous cargo 
is put aboard the freighter in less than two 
hours — in the time one spends at the matinee. 

The magic coal-loading machines were made 
and developed in Cleveland's shops. A freighter 
arrives in Cleveland from Duluth in five days — 
a distance of a thousand miles. Coal is ex- 
changed for iron ore or perhaps grain. Fourteen 
thousand tons of ore are dumped into the boat in 



50 CLEVELAND S GOLDEN STORY 

less than two hours or four hundred and twenty- 
two thousand bushels of wheat are loaded. 

In the infancy of Cleveland's shipping, it took 
four days to load three hundred tons. Stagings 
were then built inside the holds of the old 
freighters and ore shoveled by hand to the plat- 
form and then to the dock. A week was con- 
sumed in unloading three hundred tons. 

Now, the huge claws of the mammoth unload- 
ers of the lakes pile twelve thousand tons of ore 
on the docks in three hours. The ore unloaders, 
miracles of invention, were evolved by Hulett, 
Brown and McMyler, Cleveland men. These 
machines have made it possible for the Lake 
Erie ports to handle a tonnage exceeding that 
of all the ports of France. 

Four out of five of the steel lake freighters are 
Cleveland owned. The father of the iron carry- 
ing lines was the Cleveland Iron Company, 
organized in 1849 ^7 Samuel Mather, Senior, 
and his friends. In 1 870, the Great Lakes boasted 
three iron freighters. Today there is a fleet of 
more than six hundred steel ships carrying the 
world's largest cargo of iron and coal. 

Let us here pay tribute to Captain Henry 
Coffinberry and James Wallace who organized 
the Globe Shipbuilding Company. These men 
believed that a steel ship would float, contrary 
to the ideas of the old shipbuilders, who af- 
firmed that only timber would keep above 



MASTERY OF THE INLAND SEAS 5 1 

water. Coffinberry and Wallace organized the 
Cleveland Shipbuilding Company, acquiring dry- 
docks, ways and shops. The first steel freighter 
was the steamer ''Onoko." This boat earned 
enough silver to fill its hold before the prophecy 
of the old shipbuilders came to pass and the 
waters closed over its decks. 

Today the passenger ships have regained the 
popularity of yore. The "See-and-Bee" and its 
companions are floating town-houses with draw- 
ing rooms that rival the salons of Euclid Avenue. 
Going from Cleveland to Buffalo is like walking 
through the foyers and restaurants of a hotel or 
club. Little resemblance is there to the water- 
washed decks of the "Griffin." 



CHAPTER VI 
THE LINES ON OHIo's MAP 



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CLEVELAND'S GOLDEN STORY 




CHAPTER VI 
THE LINES ON OHIo's MAP 

HE living are judged by their personali- 
ties — the dead by the record of their 
accompHshments. And many of the 
achievements of the settlers of Cleve- 
land entitle them to an illuminated page 
in American history. By 1834 they had cut a 
canal from Cleveland to Portsmouth. 

This canal is 309 miles long. One has but to 
compare it with the longest canals in the world to 
appreciate the labors of the Ohio canal builders. 
The Erie canal extends like a silver ribbon across 
the Empire State for ^^^ miles. The Ganges 
canal in India is a royal water-passage of 350 
miles. The Grand canal in China, a thousand 
years in building, goes 800 miles through the 
Celestial Empire. Many famous canals are 
less than one-half the length of the Ohio canal. 
Alfred Kelley, first chief executive of Cleve- 
land, promoted its canals. He was appointed 



^6 Cleveland's golden story 

state canal commissioner but provided with 
insufficient funds. No one had faith enough in 
the undertaking even to expect to see the system 
completed. The state gave Kelley permission to 
make the cut and the people extended their good 
wishes. Kelley became a martyr to the cause of 
canals. He divested himself of personal comfort. 
With his family, he occupied a hut along the line 
of the first canal to keep a determined eye on 
the construction. 

In 1820, Cleveland was a tiny lake port with 
less than two hundred inhabitants. Sandusky 
and Ashtabula were its serious rivals. Had des- 
tiny used Alfred Kelley, who lived, loved and 
labored for Cleveland, in some other vineyard, the 
city's present position might be less auspicious. 

Kelley was inspired by the successful com- 
pletion of the Erie canal under the direction 
of Governor De Witt Clinton of New York. He 
foresaw that a canal from the interior of the 
State to Cleveland would make this lake port 
the shipping market of the Ohio basin. On July 
4, 1824, there was a celebration of the begin- 
ning of work on the Ohio canal. The Governor 
of New York, of the long line of great Clintons, 
broke the ground. In 1834, a water route from 
Cleveland to Portsmouth was realized and the 
trip was made in eighty hours. 

The passenger boats, known as "packets," 
were drawn by three horses, single file, with a 



THE LINES ON OHIO S MAP 



57 



boy driver mounted on the rear steed. The 
passengers dined, slept, conversed or wrote let- 
ters in a cabin-hall, each according to his incli- 
nation or power of concentration. 

Seymour Dunbar is authority for the state- 
ment that on one occasion one hundred men were 
crowded into a room designed for the accom- 
modation of forty-two. There was a separate 
compartment for women and children. The 
division was maintained even during the serving 
of meals. 

The maintenance of good nature in traveling 
on a canal packet was the test of one's spirit of 
democracy. A man who removed his shoes 
before retiring in the packet berth was con- 
sidered a "fop" and unnecessarily fastidious. 

The crew of a canal boat consisted of a com- 
manding captain, two hard-working steersmen, 
two juvenile drivers and the cook. While the 
other members of the crew had rest periods, it is 
said that the cook worked "all of the time." 
Canal boat traveling had much to commend it 
to those of a lackadaisical temperament. Canal 
passsage was safe. Dunbar poetizes this mode of 
travel : 

"No more delightful experience of travel 
could be experienced in all the country than that 
encountered by a canal boat passenger while 
moving through a region of wooded hills during 
the hours of a moonlit summer night. Ahead 



<;8 Cleveland's golden story 

he could see the plodding horses and their 
driver. The lights from the open windows 
gleamed on the towpath and the rugged hill- 
sides, and each new turn of the waterway 
brought into vision some new scene of shadowy 
loveliness." 

The popularity of canal traffic was attested 
by the fact that more than nineteen thousand 
passengers arrived in Cleveland by canal in 
1843. ^^d so Alfred Kelley's vision was vindi- 
cated. Like Alfred of old, surnamed "the Great," 
he proved his case. "Going to Cleveland" was 
early made the vogue through the agency of the 
canal boat, despite considerable discomfort and 
low bridge hazards. Thus was Cleveland's shop- 
ping district given initial impetus. 

The canal boats brought wool, flour, wheat 
and coal to Cleveland. One barge brought a 
cargo of coal in 1828. There was a vain endeavor 
to market it about the town. Wood was plenti- 
ful. Why should one soil his jacket and soot the 
chimney of his house with this black stuff? At 
last Philo Scovill, mine host of the Franklin 
Tavern, was induced to burn it in his bar-room 
grate. Men and dogs soon gathered about to 
bask in the continuous and unvarying warmth. 
And thus Old King Coal persuaded the people 
to allow him to become the servant of all. 

Alfred Kelley was the James J. Hill of the first 
half-century of Cleveland's commercial develop- 



THE LINES ON OHIO S MAP 59 

ment. Mr. Hill once said, "I have written my 
name in lines of steel across the face of the 
continent and no man can erase it." Alfred 
Kelley wrote his signature on the map of Ohio. 

After the completion of the Ohio canal he 
turned his intense energy to railroad building. 
Kelley was first, last and all of the time for Cleve- 
land. He knew that if the canals benefitted 
Cleveland, the railroads were certain to do a 
thousandfold more. 

The Ohio Railroad of 1836, not of Kelley's 
promotion, was built on piles driven into the 
ground — the ''railroad on stilts." But this 
enterprise proved a bubble and brought nothing 
to the investors. For many years a portion of 
the track stood on Lorain Avenue. 

Kelley organized the Cleveland, Columbus and 
Cincinnati Railroad on an entirely different 
basis than that of the unstable Ohio Railroad. 
Kelley knew one lesson by heart. He knew that 
to build and operate a railroad, one must have 
ample capital. A meeting was held in the old 
Empire Hall. Kelley made a speech. The citi- 
zens saw the light, but lacked warmth over the 
enterprise. Then Kelley dramatically locked the 
doors and changed his appeal to a demand. 
The session lasted till the 'Veesma' hours" and 
the funds were raised in a generous amount. 

Construction had, some time before, been 
started on the Scranton flats of the Cuyahoga 



6o Cleveland's golden story 

River. Kelley himself filled the first wheelbarrow 
with earth — every shovelful a symbol of prog- 
ress. Other men followed his example. After the 
Empire Hall subscription meeting, the Cuyahoga 
Steam Furnace Company built the first engine. 
It was a wood-burning iron horse which wheezed 
and coughed itself nearly to pieces. But it drew 
a string of flat cars on the construction work 
with speed and regularity. 

The newspapers of rival towns had directed 
shafts of satire at Cleveland's "wheelbarrow 
railroad." The "Cleveland Herald," however, 
on February 20, 1851, silenced them all with 
this barrage: "There is no use attempting an 
editorial today. The eloquent, sublime and fine 
all have vanished from our caput and their 
places are filled with one extremely large, splut- 
tering, whizzing locomotive." 

An advertisement in the Cleveland papers 
announced, "The regular through trains of the 
Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati Railroad 
will commence running on Tuesday next." A 
minister of the time used as his text, "The 
chariots rage in the street, they jostle one an- 
other in the broadways; the appearance of them 
is like torches, they run like lightning." 

Rails for Cleveland's first steam road were 
brought from abroad. Today Cleveland is send- 
ing steel railway supplies to the Old World. 
Railroad regulation is one of the leading topics 
before the Nation for 1920. 



THE LINES ON OHIo's MAP 6l 

Cleveland's first going railroad was regulated 
with a drastic indifference to the company's 
plans. The Council passed an ordinance which 
limited the speed of trains in the city limits to 
five miles an hour. Trains were not permitted 
to run at night. Trains were stopped to collect 
fares. Those who unofficially objected to the 
railroads placed obstructions on the tracks. 

The first railroad eastward from Cleveland 
was the Cleveland-Painesville-Ashtabula, which 
started operation in November, 1851. This road 
was financed with difficulty. Investors believed 
that it could not compete successfully with the 
lake steamers. Provision was made for a double- 
trackway and a good road-bed. Today this bit 
of railroad is a most important fraction of one of 
America's greatest railway systems. 

The journey to Buffalo from Cleveland was 
interrupted by a change at Erie to another short 
line. The various short lines were of different 
gauge, and through transportation was impos- 
sible. Cleveland men planned a consolidation of 
the many small lines, which resulted in the Lake 
Shore Railroad. Eventually the Lake Shore 
became a through line from Chicago to Buffalo. 
One trunk line after another made Cleveland 
a central point. 

Alfred Kelley, crowned by his associates as 
*'the railroad king," was one of the Empire 
builders to whose memory time has been unkind. 



62 Cleveland's golden story 

Nor was he an idol of his own day generation. 
He was of the Cromwellian type. He did his 
work and made no bid for applause. But to him 
belongs the credit for the canal and railroad 
development of Ohio. 

Cleveland became a bridge builder to avoid 
being '*a house divided against itself." The 
narrow valley of the Cuyahoga is a deep slash 
made by nature, which runs through the heart 
of the city. And were it not for the twenty-one 
bridges to "make us one" there would be twin 
cities watching each other across the divide. 

Moses Cleaveland located his dream city on 
the eastern bank of the Cuyahoga. Later the 
settlement on the west side became known as 
*'Ohio City." Lorenzo Carter estabhshed a 
ferry for travelers who crossed the river near 
his tavern. A neighbor, Elijah Gunn, operated 
a ferry at the foot of Superior Street. 

No bridge was possible at this point but near 
the present Central viaduct a bridge of logs, 
bound together by chains, was floated. This 
portable bridge had to be drawn aside to accom- 
modate passing sail-boats. In 1821, a public 
meeting was held to raise money by subscription 
to build a substantial bridge. Thirteen persons 
agreed to pay in work and money the cost of 
this pubHc utility. 

The first wooden bridge across the Cuyahoga, 
with a draw of forty-nine feet as a passage 



THE LINES ON OHIo's MAP 6^ 

way- for vessels, caused a miniature war — "the 
battle of the bridge." The Ohio City merchants 
objected to their trade going to Cleveland. Its 
city council declared the bridge "a public 
nuisance." An official organized a raid and 
blasted one abutment of the bridge. 

William Case of Cleveland, backed by a com- 
pany of miHtia armed with muskets and an 
ancient cannon, waited on the bridge to meet 
the attacking party. The Ohio City stalwarts 
advancing with axes and crowbars, ripped up the 
floor of the bridge and Case was driven back with 
clubs and stones. A number were injured before 
the sheriff of the county exercised his authority. 

But the bridge spanning the Cuyahoga cre- 
ated mutual interests. And many wooden 
bridges were erected. In 1857, a wooden bridge 
at West Third Street collapsed under the weight 
of a drove of cattle. 

Zenas King, a youthful farmer and bridge 
builder, recognized the weakness of the wooden 
bridges. King built a number of bridges of iron 
girders. He was the inventor of the iron bridge 
adopted in railroad construction. King had the 
co-operation of Amasa Stone, railroad engineer 
and contractor. Bridges made on the King plan 
have been shipped and re-assembled in every 
part of the world. 

To demonstrate its supremacy as a bridge 
builder, Cleveland has erected one of the largest 



64 Cleveland's golden story 

concrete spans in the world. The high level bridge 
is five hundred and forty feet long. It is the mas- 
terpiece of the King Bridge Company. Four 
million dollars were here expended on the high 
level structure to save the laborious and un- 
necessary travel down to the flats and across the 
small bridges over the river and up the hills. As 
graceful as the arch of a rainbow, it typifies for 
all time the unity, co-operation and strength 
of Cleveland and of the old community of the 
Western Reserve. 



CHAPTER VII 
CLEVELAND THE CRADLE OF INVENTION 



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CLEVELAND'S GOLDEN STORY 




CHAPTER VII 
CLEVELAND THE CRADLE OF INVENTION 

T is a world-old belief that artists are 
not practical. But when the aesthetic 
mind is wedded to the scientific, it ac- 
complishes great things. Leonardo Da 
Vinci could do more things well than 
any other man of the Renaissance. F. Hop- 
kinson Smith of our own age was a water-color- 
ist, novelist and lighthouse builder. 

The destinies of Cleveland were influenced by 
a man of the Da Vinci type. Jeptha H. Wade 
was a successful portrait painter who lived in 
Adrian, Michigan. His scientific bent led him 
to experiment with the camera. He made the 
first daguerreotype taken in the Middle West. 
On a chance visit to Baltimore, Wade wit- 
nessed Samuel F.B. Morse send amessage over the 
first telegraph line. This proved the turning point 
of his life. He said farewell to the brush and pal- 



68 Cleveland's golden story 

ette. The insulator of the Morse instrument 
was imperfect. The young artist invented the 
Wade insulator, adding to the facility with 
which messages could be sent and received. 

In 1847, Wade studied the construction and 
equipment of telegraph lines in the field. He 
strung the first line between Detroit and Jack- 
son. He then ran lines from Detroit to Cleve- 
land and Buffalo. The Wade line from Cleveland 
to St. Louis was completed in 1849. 

A telegraph office had been opened in the old 
Weddell House on West Sixth Street. As the 
eager citizens gathered around the instrument 
installed on September 15, 1847, they were 
startled when it began to act apparently of its 
own accord. A witness wrote: ''The machine all 
at once began to rattle like the bones of a skele- 
ton under a galvanic battery and the line was 
reported in order." 

Mr. Wade consolidated the existing inde- 
pendent lines running out of Cleveland. This 
consolidation formed the kernel of the Western 
Union Telegraph Company. With the imagi- 
nation of the artist, Wade proposed in 1861 a 
transcontinental telegraph line. His plans were 
considered nebular, altogether visionary and full 
of folly. Wade, undaunted, personally super- 
vised the construction of a Hne to the Pacific. 

In August, 1 861, he sent a jubilant message 
over the newly constructed line to San Fran- 



CLEVELAND THE CRADLE OF INVENTION 69 

CISCO. The route of the first transcontinental 
railroad followed the Wade wires. The Pacific 
Telegraph Company was consolidated with the 
Western Union under Mr. Wade's directorship. 

Mr. Wade, who made New York's news San 
Francisco's breakfast topic, was rewarded with 
great wealth. He enriched Cleveland with many 
generous gifts — Wade Park being his most 
notable memorial. 

The motto of Victor Hugo was "More Light." 
Charles Brush accepted this motto as his very 
own. Brush, a sturdy lad, was living on a farm 
at Euchd, east of Cleveland, in i860. He at- 
tended school in Cleveland studying chemistry, 
physics and mathematics at the old Central 
High. He made curious experiments, to the 
amazement of his instructors. 

At thirteen, he had discovered the relation- 
ships between magnets, and constructed a tel- 
escope, grinding the lenses and fitting them into 
the instrument. In 1867, Charles Brush dis- 
played an intense interest in the discussions 
of an electric light which had been created 
in Paris, by current from a battery. 

The young man went to the University of 
Michigan. He applied himself to two problems: 
first, how to construct a dynamo to give the 
amount and kind of current to operate the 
lamps in a circuit; second, to find how to work a 
lamp without its flickering. 



70 CLEVELAND S GOLDEN STORY 

In 1876, he gave the world the Brush dynamo, 
a horse tread-mill on a farm east of Cleveland 
supplying the power. His first arc lamps con- 
sisted of two carbon lamps slightly separated. 
The current jumped from carbon to carbon, 
giving off "a dazzling white light." Twelve arc 
lamps were installed in Monumental Park, now 
the Public Square. 

On the evening of April 29, 1879, ^^^ ^^^^ 
lights sent rays over the assembled citizens. 
Many of them looked at the lights through 
smoked glasses to protect their eyes. The most 
emphatic protest against the arc lamp was 
voiced by women who affirmed that it lighted 
their complexions to disadvantage. David Be- 
lasco now lights his stages to complement the 
types of coloring of his women stars. 

The Brush arc lamp has given a sense of 
security to the people of nearly every city in the 
world. It has lighted the dark corners from 
which crept the menace of crime and vice. The 
Brush dynamo is the grandparent of the tre- 
mendous modern generators, the lesser suns of 
the world, furnishing light, heat and power. 

The Brush Company has for many years 
supplied the world with the materials for this 
method of lighting. Eventually Brush, Thomp- 
son and Edison merged the production of their 
inventions to form the General Electric Com- 
pany. 



CLEVELAND THE CRADLE OF INVENTION 7 1 

Cleveland manufactures three-fourths of the 
carbon materials used in the United States. 
At Nela Park is the first establishment for the 
exclusive study of the distribution of light. 
Equipped like a great educational institution, 
the Nela Park laboratory has achieved many 
wonderful decorative and practical effects with 
illumination. Dayhght is re-created at night 
through Nela inventive genius. 

Charles Caleb Col ton said: "There are two 
metals, one of which is omnipotent in the cabi- 
net, and the other in the camp — gold and iron. 
He that knows how to apply them both may 
indeed attain the highest station." Cleveland 
men have applied their knowledge of iron with 
intelligence and colossal energy. 

The city's mammoth iron and steel industries 
began in Nathaniel Doan's blacksmith shop in 
1798. A small foundry was opened in 1828 by 
John Ballard and Company. In 1834 the iron 
interests became ''big business" and the Cuya- 
hoga Steam Furnace Company was incorpo- 
rated. A blast furnace was erected that was 
''blown" by steam instead of horse-power. 

The canal built by Alfred Kelley was utilized 
in bringing iron ore from central Ohio. The first 
locomotive that pulled a train in the Middle 
West was constructed by the Cuyahoga Steam 
Furnace Company and shipped to Michigan. 
In 1 841, this company molded the first cannon 



72 CLEVELAND S GOLDEN STORY 

made in Cleveland. The great swamps which 
furnished bog iron ore in those years are now 
devoted to the cultivation of onions. But it was 
not local ore that made Cleveland powerful. 

The discovery of iron ore in the Lake Superior 
region inaugurated Cleveland's romantic rise in 
the world of metals. Dr.J.L. Cassells^a Cleveland 
chemist, made a journey in 1846 to the Lake 
Superior region. He went to seek silver but 
found iron ore deposits vast enough to enrich 
the nation. Iron ore was shipped from Lake 
Superior to Cleveland in 1852. The first cargo 
consisted of six barrels — not considered worth 
the freight. 

One of Cleveland's iron masters in the '60s 
was Henry Chisholm. Iron became gold at his 
touch. Mr. Chisholm's first activities in Cleve- 
land were in the building of docks and piers. He 
then turned to iron making, concentrating on 
nails, bolts, screws, spikes and tools. 

In 1857, Mr. Chisholm established a rolling 
mill and blast furnace in Newburg. He did not 
fear innovations, and used the Bessemer con- 
verter, which was then considered an experi- 
ment. The early railroads took all of the rails 
that could be turned out. Mr. Chisholm died 
in 1880, leaving behind him an industry whose 
employees constituted a city of themselves. 

There are more than two hundred foundries 
and about two hundred machine shops and 



CLEVELAND THE CRADLE OF INVENTION 73 

metal mills in Cleveland. The city has earned 
the title of 'The Sheffield of America." 

The flesh of the motor car is steel. Gasoline is 
its food. So it is natural that Cleveland should 
send over the highways of the world thousands 
of motor cars of its own make, and into the air, 
motor-driven planes. 

The Columbus of the automobile industry in 
Cleveland was Alexander Winton, another man 
from the heather-flecked land. At nineteen, this 
Scotch lad came to New York with his mother's 
blessing and a love of work. 

He followed the family's historic occupation 
of marine engineer and sailed for two years. In 
1884, Alexander Win ton was employed in a 
Cleveland machine shop. He was interested in 
the improvement of the bicycle. And in the 
bicycle shop Mr. Winton, then a member of the 
company, began motor car experiments. 

His first trial machine stalled in front of the 
Brush home on Euclid Avenue. And there is an 
amusing story of Mr. Brush's arriving on the 
scene to assist and asking Mr. Winton, "Alex, 
can't you make it go?" The automobile wizard 
called from under the machine, * 'Would I be 
here if I could?" 

It was in 1896 that Mr. Winton completed his 
first car — a car built in his backyard. He 
worked on this car mostly at night and on holi- 
days. The neighbors reckoned the period of his 



74 CLEVELAND S GOLDEN STORY 

labors by sleepless nights. And when the 
machine finally snorted its way out of the yard 
into Bolton Place, the folk next door were as 
grateful and happy as the inventor — but for an 
entirely different reason. The uncalculating 
Tom Sawyers solicited a ride, but older people 
who prized life and limb declined Mr. Winton's 
invitation. 

And in 1898, the car was put on the market — 
the first automobile sold in America. This 
machine, a phaeton, was sold to a mechanical 
engineer, Robert Allison of Port Carbon, Pa. 
The price was ?i,ooo. It had one cyhnder, car- 
ried two passengers and made a speed of ten 
miles an hour. The engine was cooled with ice, 
and infinite patience was required to start it. 
The erratic motion of one cylinder was un- 
musical to the ears of its builder, who gradually 
increased the number of cylinders to six. 

The Winton Company stands in a proud 
relationship to the city of its nativity. It is 
manufacturing the same car, in the same city, 
under the same name, and by the same owners 
as in its beginning. 

Cleveland's annual production of automobiles 
is now placed at eighty-five thousand cars. The 
industry is shared by ten active companies with 
a capital of over fifty million dollars. The 
annual output is valued at forty million dol- 
lars, double the value of all the goods manufac- 
tured here in 1870. 



CLEVELAND THE CRADLE OF INVENTION 75 

Forty years ago, Worcester R. Warner and 
Ambrose Swasey began producing machine 
tools. Since they joined their forces, these two 
honored Cleveland citizens have made the name 
of Warner and Swasey the symbol of highest 
achievement in the making of scientific equip- 
ment and instruments. 

As early as 1 886 they set a world's record in the 
building of the thirty-six-inch refractor of Lick 
Observatory. 

Three of the most famous astronomical instru- 
ments in the world have been since erected by 
Warner and Swasey. The universe is viewed 
through Cleveland lenses at the Yerkes Observa- 
tory, the Naval Observatory in Washington, the 
National Observatory at Argentina, and the 
Canadian Government Observatory at Victoria. 
No great material reward has come to them 
through the making of scientific instruments. 
Mammoth machines and tools bring profits 
with which Warner and Swasey make their 
contributions to science. ''From telescopes to 
turret lathes" suggests the range of Warner and 
Swasey achievement. 

Oil has the habit of making men rich. It 
lavishly rewards its diggers and refiners. The 
plain native name of petroleum is given in text- 
books as "rock oil." John D. Rockefeller beyond 
all other men has guided and influenced the pro- 
duction of "rock oil." 



76 Cleveland's golden story 

Mr. Rockefeller left high school at fourteen 
to work in a Cleveland commission house. A 
commentor says: "He went in as an errand boy 
and clerk. He became a partner and manager." 
In 1862, when he was twenty-three years of age, 
Mr. Rockefeller went to work for Samuel 
Andrews, a chemist and refiner of crude oil. 
From that time onward, he progressed with a 
consistency that made him the marvel of the 
commercial world. 

In this period the organization of the oil in- 
dustry commenced. The oil company with which 
Mr. Rockefeller was connected shared part of 
the second story of the Gushing block. Public 
Square and Euclid Avenue. The ground-floor 
was occupied by the dry-goods store of what is 
now the William Taylor Son and Company. 

Mr. Rockefeller, with his genius for leader- 
ship, attracted men of might. Harkness, Flag- 
ler, Andrews, and Huntington came to him. 
These men solved the difficult problems of the 
refining and distribution of oil. They eliminated 
chance to a large degree. 

They stimulated regularity in production and 
reduced waste. They utilized the by-products, 
and like conjurers created absolutely new lubri- 
cants and chemicals. Eight thousand miles of 
tank cars, two hundred and fifty oil steamships 
and more than fifteen thousand tank stations 
in America and Europe were established by the 
Rockefeller interests. 



CLEVELAND THE CRADLE OF INVENTION 77 

King Kerosene, Cleveland's gift to the world, 
has largely abdicated his throne in favor of 
Prince Gasoline. Today there is an annual pro- 
duction of a billion gallons. The automobile, 
motor boat, aeroplane and other vehicles of 
swift movement demand gasoline in ever- in- 
creasing quantities. And the industry which had 
its inception in Cleveland seems equal to the 
call. 

Cleveland, being a lake port, has long been a 
well-painted town. Sailors have ever been known 
as active painters. A well-painted ship is their 
pride and when on land, sailors paint from force 
of habit. You have but to go to Salem and other 
old sailing towns to see the almost overly 
painted houses gleaming white in the sunlight. 
Of course in the forefather days of the Western 
Reserve there were many shabby, weather-worn 
buildings. Lorenzo Carter, however, painted his 
tavern red, the color being produced by mixing 
red clay and oil. 

In the early '60s, an enterprising clerk in a 
dry-goods store became mentally saturated 
with paints and oils. Henry Sherwin opened a 
shop and experimented with paint grinding. 
He formed a partnership with E. P. Williams in 
1870. The company had the munificent capital 
of two thousand dollars. From the first mixings 
of colors on a stone slab, came the paint grinding 
mill, resembling the old-fashioned flour mill. 



78 Cleveland's golden story 

Soon grinders were perfected. The quality- 
improved and the quantity increased through 
the years. The slogan of Sherwin-Williams 
paint expresses the magnitude of the business — 
"It covers the earth." 

Today there are thirty-three paint plants in 
Cleveland, getting their supplies from India, 
Argentina and China. Many porcelain -like 
enamels and varnishes have been originated in 
Cleveland, the cradle of invention. 



CHAPTER VIII 

Cleveland's golden facade 




CLEVELAND'S GOLDEN STORY 



CHAPTER VIII 



C 



CLEVELAND S GOLDEN FACADE 




UCLID Avenue is Cleveland's golden 
facade. It is one of a trio of notable retail 
promenades — Fifth Avenue, State Street 
and Euclid Avenue. This proud thor- 
oughfare was once a long Indian trail. 
Moccasined feet trod the narrow path, now 
widened to the motor-way, where passes the 
flower of civilization. The old trails followed 
west to east on the crest of the ancient beach 
lines. Sandy and well-drained, they formed 
comfortable highways for the Redskin. 

The original plan of the city did not provide 
for Euclid Avenue. The village added the road 
as a convenient way to the east, surveying it in 
1816. Its scholastic name was derived from 
Euclid township, through which it passed. The 
township was named by its founder, a surveyor, 
after Euclid, the nestor of mathematicians. 



82 Cleveland's golden story 

The first broad way provided for the Western 
Reserve by the Connecticut Land Company was 
based on the Indian trail which became Euclid. 
It was the route of stage coaches and freight 
wagons for Buffalo and therefore often called 
the "Buffalo Road." A man destined to become 
Governor of Ohio, Samuel Huntington, in 1802, 
had an encounter with wolves on the Euclid 
road at what is now East 55th Street. Mounted 
on his horse, he battled the pack with an um- 
brella — his only armament. They followed him 
to the edge of the little settlement west of the 
Public Square. 

A panther known and feared was killed on 
EucHd in 18 10. Thus ended the destructive 
beast who dared to make war on man. Oxen 
drew stone- boats through the mud, taking 
children to school and families to the Meeting 
House on Sunday. In 1840, Euclid was planked 
and the destiny of the street determined. 

The acre of land on which the William Taylor 
Son and Company's store now stands was pur- 
chased by the Connecticut Land Company for 
forty cents. The next sale recorded of this land 
was at seven thousand dollars. The estimated 
value placed on it now is two million dollars. 

Euclid was graded and trees were planted in 
i860. Euclid Avenue then came into a distinc- 
tion accorded to but few streets in the world. 
To give Euclid as one's address was a credential 



Cleveland's golden facade 83 

recognized in every centre of culture in the 
world. Brush, Chisholm, Wade, Rockefeller, 
King, Wellman, Johnson, Pack, Brown and 
Mather were some of the men whose residences 
made Euchd a hall of fame. 

Commerce slowly, but like an irresistible tide, 
invaded the street. The street railroad came in 
i860. The street became an avenue in 1870. 
Once the street was a haven of quiet and repose. 
More people pass East Ninth Street and Euclid 
in a quarter of an hour today than hved in the 
city in 1835. 

The decline of Euclid as a residence street and 
its dedication to business has its compensations. 
The city is doing something unique for its new 
beautification. Had Euchd retained its old 
status, the business district would have shifted 
to a less formal lay-out. The municipal group 
plan, which contemplates the transformation of 
that part of the city which forms its foyer, will, 
as Julian Street says, "Give Cleveland a certain 
right to call herself, first city." 

On Euclid Avenue there are many estab- 
lishments which historically, artistically and 
commercially rank with the noblest institu- 
tions of their kind in the world. Many of these 
houses trace a direct ancestry to Cleveland's 
oldest stores. 

Cleveland's first merchant was Nathan Perry, 
who sold drygoods in 1809. From Perry's 



84 Cleveland's golden story 

Corners, now West Ninth Street, a trade district 
extended eastward along Superior Street to the 
Square. In Nathan Perry's day, competition 
was exceedingly keen and frank. One merchant 
would call attention to another's deficiencies. 

Nathan Perry published an advertisement in 
which he affirmed that though his list of goods 
was not as long as some of his neighbors' on 
paper, they were to be found on his shelves! He 
directly stated that the small White Store, a 
later competitor of his, made pretensions which 
were largely puffs for cheap merchandise. But 
Sir Advertisement has become a gentleman since 
Perry's day. 

George Worthington, the adventurous son of 
a hatter, came to Cleveland in 1829. He readily 
saw a chance of supplying canal diggers with 
good tools. He doubled his money in his trans- 
actions and invested it in a stock of hardware. 
The hatter's son founded the present George 
Worthington Company, Cleveland's oldest busi- 
ness house. 

The early '30s were natal years for Cleveland's 
stores. John Vincent opened a cabinet shop in a 
cooperage on Mandrake Lane near the present 
high level bridge. The boom of 1836 brought 
many people from the east. Travel was so beset 
with difficulties that furniture could not be 
transported. Accordingly, the Vincent store 
prospered. The Vincent - Barstow Store on 



Cleveland's golden facade 85 

Euclid traces to the Vincent shop of ninety 
years ago. 

In 18605 Cleveland's retail centre was west of 
the Square near West Sixth Street. It took some 
courage on the part of Hower and Higbee to 
open their store one door east of what was then 
Seneca Street — now West Third Street. But 
they prospered. The Higbee Company with its 
establishment on Euclid is the result. 

In 1845, ^' ^- Beckwith opened a store in 
Cleveland for the sale of floor coverings. There 
were no rugs in those days, nothing but carpets 
in lengths. In 1849, Frederick A. Sterling be- 
came a factor in the Beckwith business. In 
1886, George P. Welch entered the firm known 
today as the Sterling and Welch Company. 

In 1873, Cleveland's first carpet and interior 
decoration house, under the direction of Mr. 
Sterling, moved into a famous skating-rink be- 
tween the residence of Dr. Cushing and 
Taylor Store. 

One afternoon in 1 877, the carpets were packed 
under the galleries and the store decorated for 
the Charity Ball to be held in the evening. 
When dressed for such an event, the only re- 
minder of the fact that the ball was held in a 
store was the fact that the musician's platform 
was composed of a huge pile of carpets. 

The Sterling and Welch Company was 
among the first houses to venture on upper 



86 Cleveland's golden story 

Euclid. Its present building constitutes one of 
the three greatest commercial galleries of dec- 
orative art in America today. 

A talented young man named Webb C. Ball 
came along and opened a shop at the corner of 
Superior Street and West Third Street to make 
and repair watches. His inventions attracted 
notice. He standardized the railroad time out of 
Cleveland which is known today as Ball's time. 
The store of Webb C. Ball on Euclid is part of 
the great Ball time organization. 

The first department store in Cleveland was 
McGiUin's on Superior Street opposite Ball's. 
McGillin's neighbor was Paddock and Son, 
furriers and hatters. Halle Brothers in 1891 
succeeded the Paddock Store, and the business, 
as the Halle Brothers Company, was moved to 
upper Euclid. 

In April of 1870, William Taylor with Thomas 
Kilpatrick as junior partner, founded the firm of 
Taylor, Kilpatrick and Company, to do a general 
dry-goods business in the Cushing block at the 
south-east corner of the Public Square. The 
site was formerly the home of Dr. Erastus 
Cushing whose name and fame live in the pro- 
fessional and commercial annals of Cleveland 

Both Mr. Taylor and Mr. Kilpatrick had long 
been "in dry-goods," as they say in Scotland. 
They came from Hogg, Brown and Taylor's 
store in Boston, then the largest dry-goods house 



Cleveland's golden facade 87 

in America, of which Mr. Taylor's elder brother 
was a managing partner. 

The high-class retail section of Cleveland was, 
prior to 1870, confined to Superior Street. Dr. 
Erastus Gushing, by means of much persuasion, 
induced the proprietors of the projected Taylor- 
Kilpatrick store to locate on Euclid and the 
Public Square in opposition to the advice of 
local commercial prophets. The Taylor-Kilpat- 
rick store pioneered the commercial conquest of 
Euclid Avenue. 

The inaugural announcement of the Taylor- 
Kilpatrick store in the ''Cleveland Herald" is 
worthy of reproduction for its statement of 
principles, its graceful literary quality and its 
prophetic setting-forth of principles now ac- 
cepted as the ethics of merchandising: 

"We will open on Thursday, April 21st, with 
an entirely new stock of dry-goods, suitable for 
the season and complete in every department. 
Our goods are bought in the present low market 
and will be sold exclusively at the one-price 
system at popular prices. 

'The store is large, convenient and well 
lighted and we think the locality will commend 
it to public favor. We will adopt the one-price 
system without variation, and will therefore 
mark the article at the lowest living profit, 

'Tlease, therefore, give us a trial and judge 
for yourselves. You will find a new store, new 



88 Cleveland's golden story 

goods, popular prices, one price for all, good 
light, fair dealing, and we trust prompt attention. 
"Taylor, Kilpatrick & Co." 

There were thirty-six salesmen in the new 
store. On certain evenings of the week one 
could shop until ten o'clock. The goods were 
displayed under the light of "ten large chande- 
liers." 

The motto of the British merchant. Sir 
Thomas Gresham, engraved on his portrait 
made in 1 544 and which now hangs in Mercer's 
Hall, London, is "Love, Serve and Obey." The 
motto of William Taylor and his partner was, 
"Honesty in word and ware," — a phrase used 
in one of their early announcements. 

William Taylor fathered in the Middle West 
a revolutionary principle in retailing. This prin- 
ciple is today followed by the leading merchants 
as a moral principle, deviation from which is 
considered no less than commercial crime. 

Mr. Taylor insisted upon the observance of 
the one-price system in his store without vari- 
ation. This meant the same price on a given 
piece of goods to every customer. 

Prior to this period, a great deal depended 
upon the persistence of the customer or the 
mood of the merchant as to the final price of an 
article. The more subtle manner of selling was 
to offer an item marked fifty dollars at, say, 
forty "as a special favor to you." 1 



Cleveland's golden facade 89 

The Taylor business creed as first voiced by 
its founders is observed to the final letter today. 
The original standards of the founders of the 
business are observed. They are the unseen 
mentors of the store policy. 

The first change in the personnel of the firm 
came in 1 885 when Mr. John Livingstone Taylor, 
the only son of the senior partner^ at the 
age of twenty-four years, was admitted to part- 
nership. Mr. Kilpatrick withdrew from the firm 
in 1886, removing to Chicago. The firm then 
assumed the name of William Taylor Son and 
Company. The passing of Mr. William Taylor 
occurred in 1887. Mr. John Livingstone Taylor 
died in 1892. At the demise of her husband, 
John Livingstone Taylor, Sophia Strong Taylor 
succeeded to the business and is now president 
of the company and controlling owner. 

The business established by the senior Taylor 
and so ably developed by his son is sincerely 
carried on in accordance with the principles and 
policies outlined by them. The Taylor Store is 
in spirit exactly the same institution that, with 
high hopes and unusual ideals, made its first bid 
for public approval in 1 870. 

The Taylor Store then occupied the first floor 
of the Cushing block. Their up-stairs neighbors 
were the Standard Oil Company and the Water 
Works Department of the city. Almost every 
year has witnessed an enlargement of the 



90 CLEVELAND S GOLDEN STORY 

floor space. In 1890, the entire Gushing block 
was occupied by the Taylor Store. 

In 1907, the present five-story building was 
erected at 630 Euclid Avenue. In 1913, four 
skyward stories were added. Since then the 
Clarence Building, adjoining Taylor Store on 
the west, has been acquired. The Clarence 
Building will be torn down and on its site an 
addition built in the same architectural style 
as the present building. 

With all its rapid progress the house never 
compromised with its convictions. The founder 
was a Presbyterian of the school that put duty 
before gain. He insisted upon a strict observance 
of the Sabbath. The store has never issued 
Sunday advertising. The curtains of the show- 
windows are drawn and all work is absolutely 
suspended on Sunday. 

William Taylor Son and Company celebrates 
the Golden Jubilee of the house with the proud 
knowledge that it has kept faith with its friends, 
the public. As one passes by the store with its 
windows in the noble style of the Renaissance, 
he contemplates the steady growth of this insti- 
tution from the little dry-goods house on the 
Public Square — whose greatest asset was the 
sturdy honesty of its founders. 

Many institutions become mammoth by a 
single financial stroke on the part of a genius of 
organization. Taylor Store has grown with the 



CLEVELAND S GOLDEN FACADE 9I 

sureness of a great tree. Year after year by the 
natural process the tree casts its shade and 
gives of its fruit. In turn it is supplied with 
nourishment as a reward for its faithfulness. So 
this house, which has sought to benefit the pub- 
lic, has been sustained. 

It can be said with truth that never an hour 
of the working day passes but craftsmen and 
merchandisers in Orient and Occident are re- 
minded of Euclid Avenue. The buyers and rep- 
resentatives of its stores are searching the world 
for desirable merchandise. However, emphasis 
is put on American goods. 

Euclid Avenue in three wars — the Civil War, 
the Spanish-American War and the great World 
War — became a street of banners in which the 
Stars and Stripes eloquently proclaimed the 
American spirit of Moses Cleaveland's city. 

Going through the pages of your favorite 
newspaper is like a passage through Euclid 
Avenue. The advertisements of the Euclid 
Avenue merchants are their show-windows on 
paper. 

The first newspaper in Cleveland was edited, 
printed and published by Andrew Logan, who 
was of Indian descent. He brought his press 
and type from Beaver, Pa., to issue a four-page 
sheet. Editions were often delayed for want of 
paper. The editor would make trips to the 
east and return with several months' supply. 



92 Cleveland's golden story 

Logan's paper was "The Cleaveland Gazette 
and Commercial Register." It made its initial 
bow on July 31, 18 18. 

And there has never been a time since, in the 
intervening century, that Cleveland has been 
without a current record of its happenings. 
Though Logan suspended publication in March, 
1820, the "Cleveland Herald" had made its 
advent in 18 19 with three hundred subscribers. 
For sixty-six years the "Cleveland Herald" 
helped to make public opinion. In 1885 its 
assets were divided between the two most power- 
ful rivals, "The Cleveland Plain Dealer" and 
"The Cleveland Leader." 

The "Cleveland Plain Dealer" first appeared 
in January, 1842, and was all that its name 
implies. It was the descendant of the "Cleve- 
land Advertiser," established in 1831. For 
seventy-eight years the "Plain Dealer" has put 
in type the doings of Cleveland and its relation 
to the world. 

The first edition of the "Plain Dealer" con- 
sisted of two pages. The present "Plain Dealer" 
utilizes one hundred and forty-five tons of paper 
in one day, and has a daily circulation of over 
one hundred and seventy-five thousand copies. 

The "Cleveland Leader" appeared as the 
"Ohio American" of Ohio City in 1844. Edwin 
Cowles, a boy of eighteen, was its publisher in 
1845. Re-named "The Leader" in 1854, it be- 



Cleveland's golden facade 93 

came an anti-slavery paper and was issued at 
sunrise instead of sundown. Edwin Cowles was 
of the Dana and Greeley type — an editor of 
personality and power. 

The daily and "Sunday Leader" were bought 
by Dan R. Hanna, son of the late Mark Hanna. 

The daily "Leader'* was sold to the "Plain 
Dealer" in the Fall of 1917, while the "Sunday 
Leader" was still printed under its former own- 
ership. 

Charles A. Otis, in 1907, combined his paper, 
the "Cleveland World," with the evening "Plain 
Dealer" and the "Evening News" to form the 
"Cleveland News," an evening newspaper. 

The "Cleveland News" was later sold to Mr. 
Hanna. The "Sunday News-Leader" is now the 
Sunday edition of the "News." It is housed 
in the Leader-News Building, one of Cleveland's 
finest business structures. 

The ''Cleveland Press" was printed for the 
first time as "The Penny Press." It was founded 
by E. W. Scripps and John S. Sweeney. "The 
Press" grew with a rapidity that resulted in a 
chain of papers owned by Scripps-McRae. 

In 187b, Cleveland had fourteen papers in- 
cluding the dailies and weeklies. Cleveland, 
today, has fourteen dailies of which four are in a 
foreign language. Over fifty-five weekly publi- 
cations are issued in Cleveland and sixteen of 
these are in a foreign tongue. 



94 Cleveland's golden story 

The Cleveland newspapers, like Euclid Ave- 
nue, Cleveland's golden facade, have changed to 
meet the temper of the times from the local to 
the cosmopoHtan spirit which makes a city big 
and friendly. 



■:^r 



CHAPTER IX 
FOR OTHER BOOKS IN OTHER TIMES 




CLEVELAND'S GOLDEN STORY 



CHAPTER IX 



FOR OTHER BOOKS IN OTHER TIMES 




HE publishers of this Httle work enter- 
tain for it the hope that it will inspire 
the writing of other books dealing with 
the forces which are making Cleveland 
a People's University. Cleveland is 
teaching its citizens to live more abundantly. 
In the ideal city that Cleveland tokens to be, 
everyone is at once an instructor and a 
student. 

And it seems to us that the text-book of this 
mighty school is the Constitution of the United 
States. Instead of simply harboring institutions, 
as the river's mouth receives its ships, Cleveland 
is using them consciously and directly for the 
benefit of its citizens. 

The city's churches, from the old Stone 
Church standing sentinel on the Square, to the 
vaulted cathedrals, are enlisted in the effort to 



98 CLEVELAND*S GOLDEN STORY 

Americanize, to utilize every soul within the 
city's gates. 

Cleveland is the first city to have its churches 
thus controlled through a central church organ- 
ization. Four hundred and ten Cleveland 
churches are extending their area of influence 
intelligently and eflFectively. Ninety-five per 
cent of the Protestant churches are federated. 

The Moravians were the earliest religionists 
to settle near Cleveland. The EpiscopaHans 
held the first religious services in the frontier 
town. By 1830, three churches had been erected. 
The presence of the church in the settle- 
ment in the clearing served as a reminder of 
the Word. 

Today institutional churches are fortresses in 
the war on the evil influences that fatten on a 
growing city. Such architectural triumphs as 
Trinity Cathedral, the Euclid Avenue Jewish 
Temple and the Saint Agnes Catholic Church, 
which stand in their majesty, are permanent re- 
minders of the reverential attitude of a great city. 

Cleveland is a good parent. There are seven- 
teen agencies for the care and protection of 
children in the city. There are fresh air camps, 
dispensaries, hospitals and visiting nurse asso- 
ciations. 

The settlement houses — Hiram House, Alta 
House and Goodrich House give "courage to the 
army of the disappointed.'' They renew faith. 



FOR OTHER BOOKS IN OTHER TIMES 99 

educate and refine. Cleveland's eighty charity 
societies are responsible to a controlling welfare 
organization established in 1913. In Cleveland, 
to give is to help a man to help himself. 

In 1 8oOj Cleveland built its first school near 
Kingsbury's run. Another school for children 
opened in 1802 in Major Carter's "front room." 
From this humble but sincere beginning, the 
educational forces of Cleveland have gathered 
strength and influence until the public school 
system ranks with the first ten in America. 
Night schools and manual training courses 
supplement the general work. 

The name of the Western Reserve is perpetu- 
ated in the University — the finest tribute 
which could possibly have been paid to the New 
England men who developed Ohio. The Con- 
necticut men were school men. Moses Cleave- 
land was a son of Yale. Western Reserve 
University is educating its own historians. 

In instituting its Adelbert College, the Col- 
lege for Women, the Medical College, the 
Graduate School, Franklin T. Backus Law 
School, Dental School, School of Pharmacy, the 
Library School, and the School of Social Sci- 
ences, Western Reserve University has made 
rapid strides. Today, in co-operation with the 
Advertising Club, it has an extension school, 
one of the most practical advertising schools 
in the world. 



lOO CLEVELAND S GOLDEN STORY 

The property of Western Reserve Univ^ersity 
is valued at ten million dollars — perhaps the best 
investment that any community could make. 

And science has not been forgotten, for in 
1 88 1 was founded the Case School of Applied 
Science. In founding this school, Leonard Case 
Jr. carried out the wishes of his father from 
whom had come the gift for a school in which 
Cleveland youth could thoroughly master the 
sciences. Cleveland with its varied industries 
offers splendid opportunity for the practical 
application of scientific problems. 

The talented engineers who have been gradu- 
ated from Case School stand as examples, telling 
why this institution holds such a high rank 
among American scientific schools. 

It is now hoped and planned that a merger 
of the Case School of Applied Science and 
Western Reserve University will be effected. 
The welding of these two useful schools is in 
the Une of good management. Combination 
courses between the Case and Western Reserve 
schools are now available. 

Cleveland's public libraries are work-a-day 
hives of knowledge — not mausoleums of liter- 
ature. In one year three million four hundred 
thousand books were circulated by Cleveland's 
libraries. It has always been considered that 
leisure was required for reading. And yet sta- 
tistics show that Cleveland's busy folk are the 



FOR OTHER BOOKS IN OTHER TIMES lOI 

most consistent readers in America. One out of 
every four Clevelanders is a book-borrower — a 
record not equalled in other cities. 

The Cleveland library started with a selection 
of books on the second and third floors of the old 
Central High School. When this building was 
destroyed, the Hbrary went to the City Hall. 
It now occupies the fifth and sixth floors of the 
Kinney and Levan Building, awaiting its per- 
manent home — a temple of the intellectual 
graces to be erected as part of the group plan 
on the mall. 

The main Hbrary has more than three hun- 
dred thousand volumes, and with its branches, 
625,000 books. The Cleveland system with its 
fifty branches and 650 agencies is the third 
largest library system in the country. 

The Alta House, a combined library and 
settlement house, is the gift of John D. Rocke- 
feller. Many of the branch libraries are evidences 
of the generosity of Carnegie. The open shelf 
idea originated in Cleveland — the Cleveland 
library being the first large library to give free 
access to its shelves. 

The efforts of the Cleveland Art Museum in 
bringing to the city rare specimens of the applied 
and fine arts, ancient and modern, will do much 
to make Cleveland an Athens-on-the-Lake. 
Under the direction of Mr. Frederick Allen 
Whiting, director of the Art Museum, there 



I02 Cleveland's golden story 

exists between the Art Museum, the city's 
schools and the community a unique relation- 
ship. 

The. new museum building, permanent be- 
cause built in undying style, was completed in 
1 91 6. The museum building was made possible 
by bequests of Horace Kelley and John Hunt- 
ington. A bequest from H. B. Hurlbut has 
given a purchasing fund. 

The Cleveland School of Art, founded by 
Mrs. S. M. Kimball, now has a permanent home 
on Juniper road and Magnolia Drive. Henry 
Turner Bailey, dean of the Cleveland School of 
Art, has done much to endear him to Cleveland 
art lovers. He is closely allied with every 
movement for the beautifying of the city. His 
word as an art critic is highly regarded. 

Cleveland is one of the half-dozen cities in 
America giving popular support to a symphony 
orchestra. The Cleveland Orchestra, although 
recently formed, compares favorably with the 
best orchestras of this country. 

The Singers' Club of Cleveland, a company of 
those who sing for the pleasure they may give, 
has developed many notable artists. The club 
has sent forth to the Metropolitan Opera House 
members whose names symbol golden song. 

The publicity voice of the city will function 
directly through the new Convention Hall. The 
great renaissance building, which is now on its 



FOR OTHER BOOKS IN OTHER TIMES I03 

way to completion, will have a seating capacity 
in the arena of twelve thousand people, the thea- 
tre or concert hall of two thousand seven hundred 
and the ball room of one thousand six hundred. 

There will be six halls accommodating from 
one hundred to ^ve hundred auditors each. The 
stage is located between the arena and the 
theatre to be used by both and thus viewed by 
fifteen thousand people. Cleveland will bid for 
the conventions which name Presidents and 
make history. 

Cleveland's clubs have contributed their 
quota of culture to the city's life. There is the 
stately Union Club, the liberal City Club, the 
progressive Athletic Club, the unique Hermit 
Club, the bibliopegistic Rowfant, the University 
Club, the Tavern Club and the Chagrin Valley 
Hunt Club, where the hounds are followed after 
the romantic manner of the Virginia fathers. 

Cleveland is justly proud of its women's 
clubs — organizations that are full of helpful 
activities. Among other clubs of power for 
women are the Woman's Club, the Women's 
City Club and several progressive organizations 
for business women. 

Cleveland stands as a leader among the cities 
of the nation in its women's suffrage activities — 
not a small amount of the progress of this great 
movement having been possible through the 
able leadership of Clevelanders. 



I04 CLEVELAND S GOLDEN STORY 

When the New York Bureau of Municipal 
Research took a vote in thirty leading cities as 
to which commercial body had achieved the 
most for its town, industrially and socially, the 
Cleveland Chamber of Commerce won the bay 
leaves. One of the most potent forces in the city 
is the West Side Chamber of Industry. 

Without her banks Cleveland could tell no 
golden story. They have guarded the city's 
accumulations and extended a helping hand 
to strugghng business with a wise paternal care. 
Cleveland's first commercial bank was the 
organization now known as the National City, 
which was founded in 1845. 

Today there are forty-one chartered banks in 
the city, not including the hundreds of branches, 
private banking and brokerage houses. The 
Society for Savings, by encouraging sensible 
economy, anticipated the Government's thrift 
campaigns of the present day as far back as 
1849. 

The head of the Society for Savings is Myron 
T. Herrick, former Governor of Ohio and after- 
wards Ambassador to France. Cleveland's bank- 
ers have been entrusted with numbers of 
important missions for the nation. Cleveland 
has given to New York one of its most discerning 
banking executives in the person of former 
Senator Theodore E. Burton. Cleveland be- 
came a Federal Reserve city in 1914 — the 



FOR OTHER BOOKS IN OTHER TIMES IO5 

capital of Federal Reserve District number 
four. 

The city's hostelries, mellow in memories, 
deserve a book of "Friendly Cleveland Taverns." 
There was the old American House, where Abra- 
ham Lincoln addressed the people, and the 
hospitable Stillman, which stood for a long 
time where the Statler now reigns. 

The lobby of the Hollenden calls forth recol- 
lections of the great and good men who have 
been its guests. If an old-time visitor should 
come out of a Rip Van Winkle sojourn in the 
valley and arrive at the Public Square in search 
of a tavern, he would not be disappointed. For 
in place of the old Forest City House, there is 
the Hotel Cleveland. The Hotel Winton honors 
itself by bearing the name of the city's eminent 
automobile designer. 

It is said that Cleveland's population doubles 
every twenty years. By one concerted movement 
of its suburbs, it could make a bid for place in the 
population figures of American cities that would 
be dramatic. The city's important suburbs. 
East Cleveland, the Heights and Lakewood, are 
municipalities of themselves and therefore can- 
not be included in Cleveland's census compi- 
lations. 

Cleveland has not forgotten that fresh air and 
sunshine and a glimpse of growing things are as 
necessary as office buildings and factories to a 



io6 Cleveland's golden story 

city's strength. It has forty-three miles of 
boulevards and two thousand six hundred and 
seventy-three acres of park and meadow. 

Cleveland goes about the business of recon- 
struction as blithely as if the city's resources 
of men and money had not been tapped by war. 
The fact is that Cleveland gave not only men to 
bear arms, but men to bear burdens. 

Supplementing the fighting men, many of 
Cleveland's biggest executives abandoned, for 
the time, their private interests and went into 
the service of the nation. A former Mayor of 
Cleveland, Newton D. Baker, is Secretary of 
War. 

Cleveland pioneered the collective campaign 
idea, and was one of the first American cities to 
provide a war chest. Cleveland accepted and 
over-subscribed in every Liberty Loan a quota 
based not on her resources but on her enthusi- 
asm. Cleveland's factories became arsenals. 

The Cleveland Advertising Club, by common 
consent in advertising circles the most vigorous 
publicity organization in the country, has set 
sail on a marvellous expedition. With several 
other organizations it is about to advertise 
Cleveland not only to the world, but to its own 
people. 

When the newspapers were first issued in 
Cleveland, they were delivered on horseback as 
far as Painesville and announced, in the case of 



FOR OTHER BOOKS IN OTHER TIMES I07 

the ^'Herald/' by the blowing of a horn. The 
Cleveland Advertising Campaign Committee, 
numbering some of Cleveland's most active 
citizens, is about to blow Cleveland's horn loud 
enough to be heard around the world. And we 
imagine that the committee will use a golden 
horn to tell Cleveland's golden story. 

The advertising committee intends to advise 
the world that through the deepening and 
widening of the Welland Canal to the St. 
Lawrence River, Cleveland will become an 
international sea-port. Then piers at East 
Ninth Street perhaps will say bon voyage to 
oceanic traffic. Tropical products used in tires 
and other goods will be distributed from Cleve- 
land. 

The advertising campaign will encourage new 
enterprises to come to the city, accelerate the 
building of homes, attract labor to Cleveland 
and publicize the city as a national leader in 
"progress, prosperity, philanthrophy and public 
spirit." We can well leave to the Advertising 
Club the media and means of setting this infor- 
mation before the world. 

What concerns us here is the spirit. And the 
Cleveland spirit is that of a man who has found 
his work. Cleveland is frankly desirous of 
success. But more than this — the city covets 
the world's friendship. Most of all, Cleveland 
wants the city's children to be happy. 



io8 Cleveland's golden story 

Cleveland looks to its future. Soon its interior 
transportation might not only be a problem but 
a puzzle. The city council has approved a 
fifteen miUion dollar bond issue for a subway on 
Euclid to East 22nd Street and west through 
to the bridge. 

Hall Caine recently told an American woman 
who visited him on the Isle of Man, that he re- 
members the length and steepness of the hill 
above the Lake Shore Station at Cleveland on a 
stormy night. If the illustrious Manxman again 
visits Cleveland, and not too soon, he will arrive 
at a Pantheon-like station on the Public Square, 
ranking with the terminals of Manhattan, which 
competent critics believe are its chiefest archi- 
tectural beauties. 

Maurice Maeterlinck, on his recent visit to 
Cleveland, in contemplating and visualizing in 
his poet's mind the group plan and the mall, 
said that Cleveland awakened an interest in him, 
reminiscent of his beloved Paris. For the mall, 
flanked by the institutions which represent law, 
order, education and art, will typify the Cleve- 
land spirit. Here the courthouse, city hall, 
auditorium and library are being arranged in a 
plan avowedly the glory of American municipal 
achievement. 

Cleveland's golden story is to be continued. 
Other men in other times, standing aloof will 
look with judicial eyes and estimate the worth 



FOR OTHER BOOKS IN OTHER TIMES IO9 

of Cleveland and her people. Who may now 
presume to reconcile such divergent characters 
as Mark Hanna, maker of national policies and 
Tom L. Johnson, civic leader, both of whom 
loved and labored for Cleveland ? 

Lord Beaconsfield said: "A great city whose 
image dwells on the memory of man is the type 
of some great idea. Rome represents conquest; 
faith hovers over Jerusalem; and Athens em- 
bodies the pre-eminent quality of the antique 
world-art." 

Cleveland typifies the Nazarene ideal that a 
city is a home in which the health and happi- 
ness of the individual is a public concern. If 
the writer of this narrative were asked to set 
forth Cleveland's great idea, he would employ 
but two words — Cleveland cares, 

Cleveland will grow richer but not scornful, 
more powerful but not ungentle, more illustrious 
but not forgetful. And for this ideal, Cleve- 
land's image will ever dwell like a kindly light 
on the hearts of men. 



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